The Preeminence of Love

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If you'll take out your Bibles with me as we remain standing, I'm going to go to, again, the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians.
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1 Corinthians chapter 13.
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We're going to read from verse 8 to the end of the chapter.
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With our Bibles open, 1 Corinthians 13.8 says, Love never ends.
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As for prophecy, they will pass away.
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As for tongues, they will cease.
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As for knowledge, it will pass away.
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For we know in part and we prophesy in part.
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But when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
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When I was a child, I spoke like a child.
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I thought like a child.
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I reasoned like a child.
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When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.
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For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.
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Now I know in part, but then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
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So now faith, hope, and love abide.
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These three, but the greatest of these is love.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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Lord, it is such a precious thing to dive into the word and to seek, to go deep within it and find the precious truths and mind the depths of what it has for us.
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And Father, I pray that in the next bit of time that you would focus our minds upon this.
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Lord, for the world today is a day that's focused on a game.
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Woe unto us if we spend weeks preparing for a game and have not prepared ourselves to hear the word of God.
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We focus on so many other things.
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God, let us focus upon this.
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Let us focus upon what we hear now.
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May the word of God change us.
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May the word of God strike us, lay us bare, make us open before you that we might lay, Lord, at the foot of the cross and understand what Christ has done to make an atonement for all of our sin.
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Father, I thank you for this church.
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I pray that the preaching would be in accordance with your word, that we would worship through preaching in spirit and in truth, and that you would keep me from preaching anything that would bring disfavor or shame upon your name.
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Lord, keep me from error.
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In Christ's name.
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Amen.
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For the past several weeks, we have been studying the book of 1 Corinthians, or for the past several months, over a year, we've been in 1 Corinthians.
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But in the past several weeks, we have been looking at 1 Corinthians chapter 13.
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And I have slowed to a crawl in this passage because of the beauty of it, because of the majesty, the wonder of it.
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I've slowed down so that we could focus on it and get a feeling and an understanding of what Paul is trying to say when he talks about love being the priority.
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Love being the thing that is above all else.
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And at the end of last week's message, I don't know how many of you remember if you were here, we gathered around the communion table to have communion.
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And during the communion meditation, I made a point that I want to reiterate now, just by way of reminder.
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This section of 1 Corinthians is about love, but it really is not about the love of marriage or family or children or friends, even though certainly all of those things could apply.
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And 1 Corinthians 13 could apply to marriage, it could apply to family, it could apply to friends.
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But the love which Paul is expressing here is the love that happens within the church.
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The context here is the body of believers.
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Do we love one another? Do we actually care what happens when we when we break the threshold of the door on Sunday afternoon and we leave and we're gone and we don't see each other? Sometimes for weeks at a time.
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Do we love one another? Last week, the sermon was on the power of love.
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And we said love protects, love believes, love hopes, love endures.
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It's a love that is powerful.
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And yet it's a love that's supposed to be expressed within the body.
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Most of us can think about that love for our children.
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You know, love never fails, love endures, love hopes, love protects.
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We think about, yeah, I want to protect my child.
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I want to hope the best for my child.
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I want to believe that God's going to work in the life of my child.
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I want to endure with my child even when they're difficult to endure with.
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Amen.
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I want to do those things for my children.
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But do we want to do those things with the church? You know, we're called to protect one another in the church.
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We're called to believe and hope for one another in the church.
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We're called to persevere with one another in the church.
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And I put a lot of emphasis on this because and if it seems like I'm still on last week's sermon, well, maybe I am a little because I didn't get it all out.
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Because as I got to thinking, as I left, I thought, you know, I left out the most important part of last week's sermon.
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And that's this is that if we don't endure with each other in the church, we're not fulfilling what this command is.
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Because I have seen that the church has become a place.
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And not only this church, but but not discluding this church either, not excluding this church, I when I say the church, I know there's sort of an ethereal sort of the church, you know, well, that's everybody else, not us.
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No, we're included.
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When I say the church in this context, the church has become a place where people have the least patience and endurance for one another.
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It can be a place where the least amount of love is shown.
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Someone says something that offends me and I'm a ghost.
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I'm gone.
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I'm poof.
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I'm out of there.
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The idea of enduring for a time has been lost to a time forgotten.
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It's not uncommon that people change churches several times now, sometimes several times a year, because every time a difficult situation arises, there's no endurance and the new church they go to is happy to get a visitor.
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So there's no questions.
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I want to say this.
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If we abandon our body of believers because we're offended, then the next church shouldn't be that happy to get us because we're just going to abandon them when they offend us.
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And the next church shouldn't be happy to get them because they're just going to abandon them.
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If there is no endurance, there is no love.
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I'm not saying there's never a reason to church.
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Don't get me wrong.
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The false doctrine, mismanagement of the spiritual lives of the church and the sense of danger, bringing in false teachings, all kinds of things can turn a church wrong.
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There is a sense in which Revelation talks about the removing of the lampstand from a church that does happen.
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So don't think that I'm sitting here and if you're hearing this online, maybe somewhere somebody outside of our church is in a church where there's false teaching going on.
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I'm not saying that you have to endure forever with that.
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But what I am saying is that we're called to love one another.
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And if we can't love one another, then we're not a church.
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We're a social club.
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If we can't endure, then we're not the body of Christ.
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We're just another group of people that don't really like each other.
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But we gather together out of social responsibility and the need to have some kind of relationship.
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Think about it again.
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Love is patient.
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Love is kind.
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Love does not envy, does not boast.
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Right? The church is patient.
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Can we say it? The church is kind.
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The church doesn't envy.
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The church doesn't boast.
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I don't know.
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So Paul tells us love never ends, love endures, love never fails.
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And I want you to think about this.
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Paul is writing this to a church.
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This whole letter has gone to a church that has demonstrated an unwillingness to love.
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In fact, I would argue the fact that the whole reason why Paul says love is patient and kind, it doesn't envy or boast, it is not irritable or rude, it does not keep a record of wrongs.
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The whole reason why he lists those things is because those are the very things that if you go back from chapters one to twelve and look at what the church has been doing, that's what they have been doing.
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It's not like he pulls this out of the ether.
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It's not like he pulls this out of midair.
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He's pointing at direct problems in the church.
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Pride was a problem in the church.
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Boasting was a problem in the church.
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Envy was a problem in the church.
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A lack of kindness was a problem in the church.
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And we can point to specific references in the church.
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So 1 Corinthians, as I've said, the title of this series really is a church with problems because their biggest problem, maybe we can say it's a church with a problem.
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They refuse to love one another.
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I taught up at Set Free.
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I teach up at Set Free every Thursday morning.
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I go up and preach to the men and really, really is a blessing to me to get to be there and to study with them and to show them things in the word of God.
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And I teach right now I'm teaching through the book of James because it's very practical for our Christian walk.
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And in James chapter two, he talks about love as he talks about the royal law.
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He said, if you really want to fulfill the royal law, it is this love your neighbor as yourself.
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And if you go back to the gospels, you will remember what Jesus said when he was asked about the law.
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He said, how do you how do you understand the law? And Jesus didn't start talking about all these various codes of Israel and all of the various things that needed to be done and sacrifices and all of these, even though all of those things were still in force when Jesus said it, because Jesus lived under the old covenant.
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Right.
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He wasn't until inaugurated in his blood, the new covenant came.
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Right.
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It wasn't until then.
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So Jesus is Jesus is born according to Galatians four under the law so that he could keep the law and redeem those who are under the law that we might become adoption of sons.
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Right.
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That's the whole idea.
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Jesus is in the Old Testament.
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The first four gospels is Old Testament.
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And the sense of time.
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It's inaugurating the New Testament.
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But the old covenant is there.
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So Jesus is there.
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Jesus was asked, what is the law? She said, the whole law is this.
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Love the Lord, your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength, love your neighbor as yourself.
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So later, James and picking up on that, he's Jesus's brother.
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I know a little something about what Jesus taught later when picking up on that.
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What is the royal law? Love your neighbors yourself.
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And then I remember the question.
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You remember that in the gospels when Jesus said, love your neighbors yourself? What did the guy say? Who then is my neighbor? Why would anybody ask that question? Why would anybody ask that question? Because they want to know who they don't have to love.
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They want to know who then is my neighbor.
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They want to know who doesn't qualify for my love.
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So Jesus said there was a man who was traveling and he fell among robbers.
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And a priest walked by and saw him and passed by on the other side.
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A Levite walked by, passed by on the other side.
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And then came a Samaritan.
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Why did Jesus choose the Samaritan? Because they hated him.
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Samaritans were not Gentiles in the traditional sense of having full non-Jewish blood, but they also were not full Jewish, having full Jewish pedigree.
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And so they were considered a mongrel.
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They were they were in that sense reduced to the worst type of person.
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Remember when Jesus met the woman at the well? Was she what? A Samaritan woman? And she said, you're not supposed to talk to me.
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You're not supposed to talk.
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You think you're supposed to worship over there.
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We think we're supposed to worship over here.
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There was this big division between the Samaritans and Jesus's people, the Jews.
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And here Jesus said there was a man who came and he picked him up and he cared for him.
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Notice the story isn't the other way around.
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Have you ever noticed this about the story of the Good Samaritan? That in that narrative, that it isn't the Samaritan who falls and is beaten and a noble Jew comes and saves him? Because that would have been the heroic side of the story, right? It would have been heroic to say, yes, a person who we don't like fell into the mud or fell into the trap and was hurt and was all dirty and muddy and bleeding.
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And a noble Jew came and did what he should do.
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Jesus didn't say that.
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Instead, he said it was this person, likely a Jewish person, had fallen and the Samaritan is the hero.
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Thus, we have our term that we use today.
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When someone does something well for somebody they don't know, we call them a good Samaritan.
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Samaritan.
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That whole thought, that whole idea comes from the idea of what that Samaritan in the story did.
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He showed love.
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He picked him up.
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He cleaned him off.
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He carried him to an inn.
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He put him up and he paid for him and he said, if he needs anything else, you tell me and I'll pay it.
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He became in that moment the model for all beneficence for future activities.
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Everybody that does anything for somebody they don't know, everybody who loves somebody who is to them would be an enemy.
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That is the model of the good Samaritan.
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It's the model of love.
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And Jesus says, who was a neighbor to him? The one who did good to him.
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So you go and do the same.
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So how does that apply? Pastor Keith, I know I'm called to love in the church, but this person just really gets on my nerves.
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Pastor Keith, I know I'm called to love in the church.
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I just don't like this person.
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God never called you to like them.
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Please say amen to that.
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I mean, I don't ask for much, but God never called you to like them.
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It's and it's true.
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I am not going to like you all the time and everything that you do, because we're not always the same type of people.
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I want to, I hate to tell stories about people, but I'm going to talk about Mike for a minute.
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And if it offends you, you can tell me later and I'll, and I'll repent and sackcloth and ashes.
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But the other day we were talking and he said, we're talking about our friendship in the Lord and how much we care for one another in the Lord, but how different we are.
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And he said, Keith, if I asked you to go to a car show, you probably wouldn't want to go, but you might go because you love me.
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And he said, and Keith, if, if, if you asked me to dress as Robin and you dress as Batman, and we went to a comic book convention, I wouldn't want to go.
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And I, and I just, I never forget the fact that he's the cool car show guy.
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And I am the Uber nerd who would want to dress in a superhero outfit, but that was how he sees me.
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And that's cool.
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But the point is we don't like the same things always.
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We don't have the same hobbies, but we love the Lord and we love each other.
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And there is with everyone else in here.
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We don't, we don't have to necessarily always do things the same way.
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We don't have to like everything the same way.
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We don't even have to manage our families the same way.
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As long as we're doing it under the Lord, we're not dishonoring God by what we do.
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We can disagree and still love each other.
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As you guys know, I'm preparing for the debate next week.
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And so my mind's really been focused on how I'm going to engage this subject.
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And I think it is an important subject.
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And I think it's very nuanced and there's a lot of conversation.
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But at the end of the day, Rob called me.
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Rob and I are the, Rob's my debate partner and he's the one I'm debating against.
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And he called me the day and we talked and it was the most loving interaction.
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Because both of us were concerned that we maintain the integrity of the other's character and there be no, there be no hurtful thing said.
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That even though we disagree and on this, we really do.
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Brother, I'm not going to say this because I don't believe this about you.
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You understand that I hold you in high regard.
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I'm not going to take a cheap shot at you.
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And that was him saying that to me.
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Not in that, not in those exact words, but basically what he said, you know, he said, he said, I'm not going to take a cheap shot and we're not going to do that.
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Because at the end of the day, we're going to love each other when we walk up here.
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We're going to love each other when we walk down.
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We're going to love each other when I'm preaching at his church.
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And he's going to love me when he's preaching in my pulpit here at our church, our pulpit, I say mine.
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I don't mean to seem territorial about that.
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But this is, you know, this is where I work.
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So he's going to be preaching here and he's going to love me.
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And by extension, he's going to love all of you with the word of God.
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I'm excited.
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I kind of hate that I have to miss it, but I'm going to be down there.
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And so I've kind of gone off the rails a little bit.
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We need to get back to the text now.
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But when this text says love never ends, beloved, that's in the context of the church.
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If you have a King James, his love never fails.
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Love endures.
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That's what it means, that's what it's saying.
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Now on that, Paul begins another section of this text, which may seem to sort of pull away from the subject of love a bit.
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And in a sense, it does.
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But in doing so, Paul is going to get back to the subject at hand.
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Does anybody remember the subject at hand? The subject at hand is spiritual gifts.
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You go back to chapter 12 and the subject at hand is that there were people who had spiritual gifts and they were using them to express pride.
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I have this gift or I have that gift or what have you.
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In fact, in chapter 14, he's really going to he's going to nail this because he's going to talk about how some gifts were being misused in the church, being used to puff up rather than build up the church.
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And that is never the purpose of a spiritual gift.
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The purpose of a spiritual gift is never to puff up your pride or to increase your spiritual stock or to make you feel more important among the people of God.
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That is not what spiritual gifts are for.
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And so that's the subject here.
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And so Paul interjects in the middle of the chapter 12 and chapter 14.
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He interjects this thing about love.
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You want to know what the real important thing is? It's not how you're gifted.
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It's how you love.
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So then we get to verse 8 and he says, love never fails.
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And then he then just think of that.
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What I just said.
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Think about this.
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He says, as for prophecies, they will pass away.
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As for tongues, they will cease.
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As for knowledge, it will pass away.
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Now, just that one sentence, just verse eight.
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What he's saying is this.
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Love will not pass away.
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That's why I called today the preeminence of love.
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Love will not pass away.
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Everything else will.
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Everything else will go away.
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Whether it is prophecies, which in this sense, I think you could I think an argument could be made that he's talking about preaching as the gift of prophecy here, but it could also mean prophetic as in speaking forth, because we know that was still happening in the New Testament.
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We know that prophecies of of making prophetic utterances was still happening in the New Testament.
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So I don't think you can make a hard and fast distinction here.
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And then he talks about tongues, and we're going to get into more in chapter 14 as to what tongues are, how to understand it, the distinctions between the tongues being talked about here and what's going on in Acts 2 and those things.
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So we'll talk a little bit more later.
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Knowledge here, again, it's kind of difficult because knowledge could simply be knowledge that everyone has, or it could be what was referred to as a word of knowledge or somebody receiving a direct revelation from God.
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Right.
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And in that sense, if prophecy is forth telling, telling the future, if tongues is a tongue or a miraculous gift of tongues and the knowledge is a word of knowledge, then he's referring to three things that were miraculous that were in the first century, if that's the case.
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But if prophecy simply refers to preaching, then it's ongoing.
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If it's if the knowledge refers to simple knowledge that we get from understanding the word of God, then that's ongoing.
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And the tongues.
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So this so this becomes an issue for the question of which gifts cease and which gifts didn't in the first century.
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And this verse is often looked to as a proof text for those who would argue that the tongue ceased.
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One of the arguments made is that the verb ceased is different than the verb pass away and the other two.
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The verb pass away when it says that the knowledge will pass away, prophecies will pass away, but tongues will cease.
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It's a different verb.
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And so the argument is that Paul is saying something different about the tongues than he is about the prophecy or the knowledge.
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I don't think that that's the point.
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I don't I don't necessarily ascribe to that interpretation.
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I think there is a sense in which one is in the middle voice, one's in the passive voice.
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So the question is whether or not it stops on its own or whether or not it stopped by an outside source.
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That's the question as to how those work.
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And it is a different word.
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I mean, we should know that.
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And that's why it's translated differently in the ESV.
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It's making the difference.
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And just by by way of understanding, you all have heard me talk about cessationism before.
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Cessationism is the belief that there were gifts in the first century that ceased and were not intended to go on for all time.
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And somebody would say, Pastor Keith, are you a cessationist? I would say yes, but I may interpret that word a little differently in that I would never say God cannot do something now, whereas some cessationists would say, God, no, he cannot, won't, will not, absolutely not.
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And oftentimes we use this passage to make that point.
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They'll say it's ceased.
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Right.
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I would say that I wouldn't use this passage to make my point.
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Here's here's my argument.
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Somebody says, why are you a cessationist? Why do you take that position? I would say because I know at least one thing ceased in the first century, and that's the office of the apostle, because the office of the apostle, the Bible says that the church was founded on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Christ Jesus being the chief cornerstone.
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So if the foundation was the apostles and the prophets, you don't build more foundations.
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There's only one.
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You don't get new foundations every generation.
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It's one.
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So I would say there's there's there's even though there is a sense in which you have what we call a little a apostle, like Barnabas is called an apostle and a few other guys in the scriptures are called apostles, but never in the sense of having apostolic authority.
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Paul defines who the apostles are for us in 1st Corinthians 15, because he said there was the 12.
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And then there was him who was born as one born out of time or born out of season.
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So he makes that he makes the point that there's there's the 12.
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And of course, Judas died.
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Who took his place was Matthias.
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And then who is Paul? Paul didn't take Judas's place.
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You know, that's an argument some people make.
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Some people make the argument that Matthias was wrong and the church was wrong in choosing him.
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It was Paul who's the 12th apostle.
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Paul never claims that for himself.
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He says, I was born differently.
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These men walk with Jesus.
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I had Jesus direct revelation to me on the road to Damascus.
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And then some believe and I would I would tend to lean this way that he spent time with Jesus privately as Jesus ministered to him and taught him after his conversion, because Paul always talks about him as direct revelation, not as having heard from someone else.
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All right.
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So having said all that, so I believe the office of apostle has ceased.
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So so in that way, I'm at least a partial cessationist because I would say, yeah, I'd say that ceased.
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And with that, I think certain gifts as normative functions of the church, such as the gift of tongues and and miracles and healings, I think those ceased as normative functions of the church.
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And here's the thing that here's a little the little secret that a lot of people don't don't tell you.
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Pentecostals believe that, too.
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You say, no, they don't, because they believe in the continuation of the gifts.
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If you ask a Pentecostal, when did the gifts have a revival? They'll say in 1906, the Azusa Street revival.
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So what was happening in the 2000 years prior to that? Well, they had ceased.
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They believe Pentecostalism is a revival of something that had gone away.
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So even they believe, in a sense, a type of cessationism.
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You understand.
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So so so the idea of, you know, if somebody wanted to nail me to a wall and say, why do you believe in cessationism? Why do you believe in this? I wouldn't use this passage.
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Because I don't think that that's the point here.
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But some people have, and so I felt the need to express the point.
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If you've ever read John MacArthur's book, Charismatic Chaos, it's about 30 years old.
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It was one of my first books I ever read after becoming a pastor.
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He he spends a lot of time with this passage, and he does make the argument that the ceasing here is different and the verb is different.
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And so it has to be considered.
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Well, I've told you that and I've said, yes, I don't see it as expressly different as he does.
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But again, you know, he is John MacArthur.
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So I give you the give you the point as it is.
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But here's here's my argument.
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And this is what I want to draw to today.
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Verse nine tells us what's going to cause them to cease.
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It's not like we have to wonder.
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Because verse eight says prophecies will pass away, tongues will cease and knowledge will pass away.
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We know in part we prophesy in part.
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Verse 10, I'm sorry, verse 10.
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But when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
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When the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
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So the question becomes, what's the perfect? What's the perfect that comes? And here's the two here's the two positions.
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And again, I didn't bring here today to confuse you.
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I really am not.
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I'm trying to present to you something that is a difficult passage, does cause commentators to scratch their heads and have debates.
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And I'm not just going to come up here and tell you this is what you must believe.
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But I'm going to present to you what I believe and why and base it upon the text.
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The perfect that comes is either one of two things.
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It's either the coming of Jesus, the perfect fulfillment of the second coming.
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When the perfect comes, everything else is done away with.
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Or the perfect that comes is the word of God, because the word of God is completed in the first century and thereby the perfect is referring to the perfect canon or the perfect scripture.
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I would like that to be the one.
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I'm going to throw everything on the table.
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I really would like to believe that it's talking about the Bible, because if I did, I could tie my cessationism up in a little bow, you know, and lay it on the table and say, there it is, there's my little bow.
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But even if I go to John MacArthur study Bible, it says this is not the closing of scripture canon.
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It's not what the perfect is.
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If you have a John MacArthur Bible, I encourage you go there, open it up, read it.
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It says it's not the scripture.
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So even MacArthur, who would believe in cessationism, says that's not what this is talking about.
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Why? I believe because of what comes after it.
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It says when the perfect is come, the partial will pass away.
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And then he says in verse 11, when I was a child, I thought as a child, I reasoned like a child.
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But when I become a man, I threw away childish things.
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And then he gives another illustration.
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He says, for now we see as in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.
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Now I know in part, then I shall know fully.
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If you look at these two sections, verse 11 and 12, you'll notice the then and the now and the then.
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Now it's this way, then it'll be another way.
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Now I see in a mirror as a dimly, then I'll see face to face.
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Now I'm known in part, then I'll be known or I'll know as I am fully known.
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Right.
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So the then and the now, the then and the now is the expression that's being used.
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I think that's that's how to understand verse 11, which talks about the child and the adult.
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What's the difference between the child and the adult? Maturity, change.
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It's a difference of then and now, the now and then.
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Right now I'm a child, then I'll be an adult.
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That's the picture.
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There is something very different between now and then.
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When we think of now as the earthly and then as the heavenly.
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The now and the then is very different.
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And now I think like a child and I reason like a child.
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I reason under the noetic effect of the fall.
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You know what that is? The noetic effect means my mind has been messed up by the fall.
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That's why I don't reason perfectly.
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That's why I make mistakes.
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And when I take tests, I usually get somewhere around a 75.
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I was a solid C student all through school.
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Now, in college, I did a little better, but my reason was faulty.
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And even as a believer, as a believer, do you have perfect reason? As a believer, do you have perfect knowledge? Even of the word of God, do you know it perfectly or do you know it fully? No, and I would say our whole talking about this passage is proof of that, because we're sitting here talking about the fact that we don't know actually everything that it says.
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So now taking that into effect, I would go back to say, OK, when I was a child, I spoke like a child.
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I thought like a child.
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I think that's the now.
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But when I became a man, I put away childish things.
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I think that's the then.
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And the putting away of childish things, I believe, is the things that are not necessary in heaven.
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You know what's not necessary in heaven? Spiritual gifts.
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What's the whole context of this thing? Spiritual gifts versus love.
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What's the then and the now? The then is the now is now and then is then.
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Now, for the sake of someone who did take this to mean scripture, if they took it to mean scripture, what they would say was prior to the formation of the canon, the people of God were like children.
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And after the completion of the canon, there was a maturity that came in having the fullness of the word of God.
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Like I said, I want to be fair.
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That would be how they would understand at least that particular verse.
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And I at least can say, OK, I understand what that's saying.
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And even though I would disagree, I would say, OK, that's their position.
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Now, where I take the bigger stance, I think, is on verse 12.
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This is we now see now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.
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The word mirror dimly here is really kind of interesting because the word mirror dimly is not what we think when we think of a mirror dimly, because if I said to you, you're looking into a mirror dimly.
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Or what's the King James say? Anybody got a KJV? What's it say, Miss Laura? Darkly.
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OK, dimly, darkly.
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OK, thank you.
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The word in the Greek is enigmata, which is where we get the word enigma or mystery.
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It's a riddle.
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So the idea is when I look at the mirror, I don't really understand what I'm looking at.
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It's not just that the mirror is dirty or dark or, you know, in the first century they had.
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In fact, Corinth was a place where mirrors were actually produced, but they were first century brass mirrors were not the same as our mirrors that are now made of glass and they're painted with silver and they have this perfect.
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When you look at a mirror now, it's pretty perfect, right? It's almost exactly what you look like.
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Back then, it wasn't the same because it was made of brass.
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It was polished.
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But it wasn't when you looked at it, it was sort of like a funhouse mirror.
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You know, you kind of got an idea what you look like, but you maybe thought you were a little taller, a little wider or whatever.
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But the idea is not so much when you look at it, you're distorted by the mirror.
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It's when you look at it, you don't really know what you're looking at.
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It's a mystery.
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And I think about that when I think about this world.
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I think about the fact that the Bible says there's so much going on in this world that we don't know because we just can't see it.
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What was it, the Old Testament, where the man had his eyes open and realized he was surrounded by chariots of fire? Right, he had his eyes open, he could see what was really happening.
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Beloved, I think that's the picture here.
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He's saying that, yes, we have our we have a sense in which we know the Lord and we know the word of God, but we still look at ourselves as a riddle.
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But one day, one day, we're going to see God face to face.
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And in that moment, we're going to understand who we are.
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You know who understood who he was? Isaiah, because when he saw the Lord high and lifted up, seated upon his throne and the train of his robe filled the temple.
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And the seraphim were around him saying, holy, holy, holy, when he was there, when he was facing them and he saw the Lord face to face, what did he do? Woe is me, for I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips.
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And I have seen the Lord.
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Woe is me, woe is me.
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We see the Lord face to face.
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We're going to know ourselves for the first time.
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We're going to really know and we will be known as we've been fully known.
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Isn't that an amazing thought? I can't imagine heaven.
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I can't imagine what it's going to be like.
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I'm not and I do want to be clear about that.
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I don't think in heaven you're going to know everything about everything because I think you're going to learn in heaven.
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Maybe somebody might want to argue with me about that.
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But what I mean by that is I think heaven will never exhaust the riches of God's knowledge.
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Even if we know fully, that doesn't mean know perfectly and completely.
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It just means that we're going to have a maturity in heaven we don't have here.
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Again, going back to the picture of the child and the adult, when you get to heaven, you're going to see and understand things you've never understood before.
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You know what? Somebody said this one time and I'm going to make myself real unpopular with this, but that's OK.
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R.C.
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Sproul was sitting in a classroom with John Gerstner.
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John Gerstner was R.C.
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Sproul's mentor.
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And somebody raised their hand and said, Dr.
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Gerstner, I don't understand this.
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He said, I don't understand how I can be happy in heaven.
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If I knew my mother was in hell, you know, John Gerstner said, he said, if you understood how much your mind will be changed in conformity to Christ when you were there, you will understand that you will rejoice that your mother's in hell.
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R.C.
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Sproul laughed.
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He literally laughed.
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He said, I can't believe he said it.
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I can't believe he would say something like that.
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But do we understand the justice of God? Do we understand the righteousness of God? No, we don't, because if we did, we wouldn't ask that question.
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You will know on that day, absolutely.
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That's not in this world.
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You can't even imagine that, can you? I can't.
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I really it boggles my mind.
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But the idea that one day we'll have a sanctified mind, it's an amazing thought.
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It's amazing reality.
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Well, with that being said, I want to draw to a close in verse 13 here, because I do think this ties everything up well.
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He says, verse 12, he says, even as I'm fully known, verse 13, so now faith, hope and love abide.
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These three faith, hope and love abide.
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That means they continue on.
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They continue on, they're here with us now, but the greatest of these is love.
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Why is the greatest love? Why, in the context of everything that he said, why is love the greatest thing? It has been suggested, and I think that this could be argued that the reason why love is the greatest thing is because love, because faith and hope, like prophecy and and tongues and all the other things.
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When you get to heaven, faith will be sight and hope will be realized and thus love continues.
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And that's been suggested as the answer as to why it's the greatest.
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But might I add another, not that I wouldn't say that's necessarily wrong, but might I add another level or layer to that? Why is love greater than faith and hope? Because God is love.
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The Bible never says God is faith.
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God doesn't have faith as we have faith.
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He knows all things.
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God doesn't hope as we hope.
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He decrees all things.
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But from eternity and to eternity, God is love.
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And so the greatest of these, my brothers, is love.
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Therefore, love one another.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I pray that the spirit of God will write the word of God on the hearts of your people.
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And that the command to love each other, to endure with each other would be to us not just a suggestion.
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But the greatest of commandments to love you, to love one another.
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Lord, Christ is our king.
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He has given us a marching order.
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Love one another.
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By this, all men will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.
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And he says, go into all the world and preach the gospel, baptizing them in the name of the father and the son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you.
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Lord, that we might take that command to love seriously.
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Through our savior, we pray.
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Amen.