The Power of Love

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Take out your Bibles with me and turn again to the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians.
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This morning we're going to focus our attention on one passage of Scripture from 1 Corinthians 13, but in view of the fact that it sits not alone, but within a context, we're going to read beginning at verse 4 and read down through the beginning of verse 8.
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This has been what we have been studying the last few weeks and I want to make sure we understand where we are in our study.
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The Apostle Paul is writing and he says in verse 4, Love is patient and kind.
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Love does not envy or boast.
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It is not arrogant or rude.
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It does not insist on its own way.
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It is not irritable or resentful.
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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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Love never ends.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you that while it may seem, oh Lord, as we are belaboring this particular section of text, Lord, we know that we could mine its depths for the ages and never truly exhaust the wonderful truth that is kept within it.
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Father, this is love and if there is one thing that your scripture tells us over and over again, it is that love is the center of the Christian faith.
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Father, your son was asked, what is the greatest commandment? He said it was to love the Lord our God and to love our neighbor as ourself.
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Father, this is profundity.
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This is sublimity.
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This is amazing love.
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And Father, as we talk today about the power of love, what love can do.
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Lord, may it be that you help us to draw closer to you for the believer, Father, that they would love you and love neighbor.
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And Lord, that they would see this passage as a call to repentance and drawing closer to that conformity to Christ that we have been called unto.
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And Father, for those who have come today who know not Christ, Lord, that today that they would see that there is a God who loves and yet that same God who loves also is a God of justice and he will not see the unbelieving sinner go without recompense.
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And so, Father, his sin will either be placed upon Christ or his punishment will be placed upon him.
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So, Lord, that sinners might cry out today for forgiveness from the loving God who gives all because of that love.
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In this way, he showed us love that Christ died for us.
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Lord, let it be that they might call out to you in faith.
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Father, I pray as I preach that you would keep me from error.
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Adjust my words in tune with your heart that what is said is truly from you and from your Holy Spirit.
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And in the name of your Son, we pray.
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Amen.
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Please be seated.
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For the past several weeks, we have been examining what has to be recognized as one of the most beautiful portions of Scripture in the entire Bible.
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I mean, it is really without rival in regard to its majesty and it is not something that the world has failed to recognize.
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The world itself has even seen that this passage is one of great beauty and majesty.
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It's written on wedding invitations, love letters, Valentines and anniversary cards.
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Homes are adorned with signs which have portions of this text inscribed upon it.
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It is a masterpiece of the written word.
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And as I said in my prayer, we could spend weeks.
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Some people say, oh, it does not plumb its depths.
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We could spend a lifetime and merely scratch the surface of the love of God.
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And yet, if I were asked to summarize this entire passage, if I were asked, what do you think is the heart of 1 Corinthians 13? What's the real message of the whole text? I would say this.
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It is the preeminence of love.
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The priority of love.
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He begins by telling us that you can have any gift and all gifts and faith and even give yourself to be burned.
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But if you have not love, it's nothing.
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He then says that this is what love is.
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It's patience.
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It's kindness.
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It's not envying.
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It's not being boastful or arrogant.
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He gives us the what love is not.
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And then he talks about what love can do.
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And that's what we're going to talk about today.
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The power of love.
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And then he's going to go on later and he's going to say that there are three things that God has given us that are wonderful faith, hope and love.
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And the greatest of these is love.
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That's the the preeminence of love is the theme of 1 Corinthians 13.
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But as we've talked about in the last few weeks, when you say what is love or when you say love is preeminent, the very next question we have to ask is what if what is love? Because we can't be we can't afford to be confused about it.
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Most of us have been confused about love at some point in our life.
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Usually it was sometime around our teenage years.
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We were somewhat confused about love.
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The world, let me tell you this, the world tells us that we have found love when we find someone who makes us feel special, who makes our days brighter, who meets our needs and makes us realize how special we are.
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As a result, the world's idea of love is completely self-centered.
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Here again, meets our needs, makes our day brighter, makes us feel special and helps us understand how important we are.
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What's the center of that? Me, us, we, our.
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Me.
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This is what makes the Bible's idea of love so much different than what the world's idea of love is.
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The world's idea of love is all wrapped up in what can be done for me.
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And yet the Bible tells us that ultimately what love is about is not about me.
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The Bible tells us that true love revealed in Jesus Christ finds its power in God and it's expressed in care for others, not about me.
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And this is true in every arena that love touches.
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It's true in our relationships with our brothers and sisters in Christ.
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It's true with our families and our homes.
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And it's especially true with our spouses.
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If everything is about me and my desires, my wants, my wills, my wishes, then my love is not for others.
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It's for me and what others can do for me.
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And then people become rather than being things I love, it's people that I love to get from.
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It's people that I love to use rather than I love to love.
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And that's why Paul spent so much time and we spent so much time last week on what love is not.
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Love does not envy because envy says you have it and I should have it or you have it.
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I don't think you should have it.
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It's all about me.
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Love does not envy.
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It doesn't boast.
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It doesn't look at what somebody else doesn't have and say, look what I have and you don't.
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Again, it's about me.
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Love is not rude.
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It doesn't fail to take other people's thoughts and feelings into consideration.
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Love is not inwardly focused.
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Love is outwardly focused.
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Love is focused on others, not on self.
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So if you were here last week when we talked about what love is not, we didn't finish it.
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Go back to verse 6.
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We actually ended at verse 5 last week.
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And we said what love is not.
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Love is not envious.
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Love is not boastful.
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Love is not arrogant or rude.
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It doesn't insist on its own way.
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It's not irritable or resentful.
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Remember what we talked about with word and this is why we landed on resentful because that means keeps no record of wrongs and that was how we spent time with that.
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The most dangerous thing in love is keeping a list of what the person that you supposedly love has done that has injured you because you keep bringing that up to them.
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You keep managing to show them how they have failed you in every way and that's not love.
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If you just sit there and tell them all the time the ways that they have injured you, the ways that they have failed you, every new time they make a mistake.
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It's not that new time only but it's every other time is brought up to be reminded of to go along with this.
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It's not just this that they have to be forgiven for but they have to be forgiven for everything else too because you never forgot or were able to put aside those other things.
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It's compounded interest on your hatred.
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And so we talked about that last week.
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We talked about resentment.
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And I couldn't stop so I had to finish there.
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I couldn't move on because that's so important.
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So what I'd like to do today, even though the power of love is the subject and verse 7 is the subject, because I did not mention verse 6 last week, I would be wrong if I didn't at least explain it.
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So let me at least, if you don't mind, finish last week's sermon and then I'll have this week's sermon.
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Is that fair? And then you're going to say, well, you won't finish this week.
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Well, maybe not.
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But last week ended at the end of verse 5, picked up at verse 6, and this is what verse 6 says.
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Love, the word it, there's a pronoun, the antecedent is love.
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So we'll just say love does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.
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I spent a lot of time thinking about that.
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In fact, my wife and I had a conversation about it because usually in a sentence like this, you have the opposite thing.
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It's this or it's that.
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But that's not what Paul does here, because if he said doesn't rejoice at wrongdoing, but does rejoice at what would you think? Right doing.
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Right, that would be the natural opposite, right? But he doesn't say that.
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He doesn't say it doesn't rejoice at wrongdoing, but it does rejoice in the truth.
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That's not the exact converse to wrongdoing.
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So that's kind of an interesting way that he's saying it.
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And in the Greek, it's sort of still that way.
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Adikia is the wrongdoing.
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It means evil.
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And aletheia means truth.
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And so he says it doesn't rejoice in evil, but does rejoice in the truth.
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And I like what Gordon Fee says on this.
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He says the person full of Christian love joins in rejoicing on the side of behavior that reflects the gospel.
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For every victory gained, every forgiveness offered, every act of kindness, such a person refuses to take delight in evil, even in its more global forms, war, the suppression of the poor, or in those close to home, the fall of a brother or a sister or a child's misdeed.
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Have you ever met somebody who just seemed to revel in all that was evil and bad? Who couldn't find anything to talk about except for that which was demeaning and degrading and awful.
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Could find no joy in someone's success, but only found joy in their failure.
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Could find no joy in that which sees people growing, but only finds joy in seeing people falling.
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You're all looking at me like, yeah, you don't want to say it, but you know it.
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Maybe it's the guilty conscience keeping us from saying amen.
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I like what Fee goes on to say in his commentary.
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He says this, love absolutely rejects the most pernicious form of rejoicing over evil, gossiping about the misdeeds of others.
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Think of it like this.
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Do you ever consider what gossip is? Gossip is taking joy and delight in the failure of someone else.
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It's literally rejoicing at wrongdoing.
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And here's the thing, gossip is the sin that the church has been willing to embrace.
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Oh, we don't smoke and we don't chew and we don't go out with boys that do.
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And we certainly don't accept those who are plagued by the sin of homosexuality or those who might be living in adultery, or we certainly don't take those people who are doing some kind of a heinous sin.
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But we will certainly destroy you with our words and feel not ashamed for a moment.
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Do you realize gossip is in the same list as haters of God? In Romans chapter one.
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In Romans chapter one, Paul says this is what happens when a people are turned over to their sin.
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And he begins to give a list of the sins that they're given over to.
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Haughtiness, pridefulness, and all these other sins.
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And then he says, they are boastful, they are arrogant, they are haters of God.
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They are disobedient to parents.
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And they are gossips.
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By the way, kids, notice what else is in that list.
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Disobedient to parents, right next to haters of God.
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Right next to gossip.
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And that's an amazing thing.
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That when the Apostle Paul is writing out a list of sins, he actually includes the sins that we would say, oh it's not that bad, right next to hatred of God.
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This is something I'm very passionate about because, you know, 13th year here, pastor.
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Before that, associate pastor.
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Before that, youth.
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Before that, church member.
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I've seen great successes here, I've seen great failures here, but I will say this.
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One thing that has always been an issue everywhere, and here too, is people just love to talk.
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And there's nothing more easy to talk about than that which makes someone else look bad and tears them down.
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Because we can justify it in a thousand different ways.
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By the way, this wasn't supposed to be a sermon on gossip, but here we go.
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We can justify it a thousand different ways because we say this, well, we'll say it's true.
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It's not gossip if it's truth.
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Well that ain't true.
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By the way, write it down in your little notebook.
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Just because it's true don't mean it ain't gossip.
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Just because it's true doesn't mean it ain't gossip.
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Because the definition of gossip is not spreading lies.
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You say, well what's the definition of gossip then? Gossip is not gossip because it's a lie.
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Gossip is gossip because it's intended to demean, defame, or destroy the character of another person.
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The definition of gossip is words that are intended to demean, defame, or destroy the character of another person.
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Whether it be true or not, it's the opposite of love.
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Even if a person is fully guilty of all you say, and by the way, that's how most justify it, well they're guilty.
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Well, now so are you.
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And here's the point, it's about delighting and spreading wickedness.
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Some people do it through the prayer request, and we talked about that.
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Some of us have discussed that, how sometimes a prayer request is a veiled form of gossip.
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And we need to pray for so and so, she certainly is going through a lot.
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Well, you know she did that to herself.
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Love does not rejoice in evil, but rejoices in the good.
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Rejoices in the truth.
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You say, well I was just telling the truth.
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If a person sins against you, Matthew 18 tells us to do what? Go to him and tell him his sin privately.
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That word is there.
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You go to him and you tell him his sin privately.
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And if he repents, you have won your brother, and guess what? It stops there.
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That's the beauty of doing things God's way.
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The beauty of doing things God's way is it's done right.
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Well, I didn't want to talk to him, I was afraid he was going to be offended.
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Oh, but he wouldn't be offended that you told 50 other people? He wouldn't be offended that you talked about him on Facebook, but you didn't use his name.
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It's called vague booking.
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It's Facebook without a name.
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You go on and you complain about somebody, but you won't say who it is.
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And then they'll say, well that was about me, and you'll say, no it wasn't.
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This is all pretty serious guys, because this is an act of love, or hate.
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Like I said, this isn't exactly the intent of what I came to talk about today.
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Maybe this is something that you needed to hear.
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Maybe we all needed to hear it.
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I mean, and let me say this, in case you're a visitor, or maybe you just wonder, I don't get up here and talk about issues that are going on in the church like I didn't come up here today because I know there's gossip happening.
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I'm not up here with my pulpit and my paddle, and I'm spanking the church because there's gossip going on.
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If there is, I don't know about it.
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But I do know this, the times characters and persons have been the most injured in the past here and elsewhere in churches have generally been because of gossip.
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Because of the unwillingness to talk to the person, and more willing to talk about the person.
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That is rejoicing in wrongdoing, not rejoicing in the truth.
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How do we rejoice in the truth? We actually are excited and happy and expressing our happiness at those things which are noble and good.
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Think on those things, doesn't the Scripture tell us, to think on the things that are noble and good and righteous.
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When we come together, do we talk about Christ? Do we talk about the Word? Do we talk about what God has done for us? And what God is doing through us? Are we rejoicing in the truth, or would we rather talk about how our brother has failed us? Or how our sister has shamed herself? Or how our friends, our friends have offended God? Wherein is our delight? And again, just so I'm clear, there are times when people have to be confronted, there are times, and that's why Matthew 18 exists, because sin exists sometimes.
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But it's not, I don't confront Brian to Chris.
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Not that you need to be confronted, Brian, but you're here today, so I'm going to talk about you.
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No, I'm just saying, I don't go to Chris about Brian, I go to Brian about Brian.
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And the only time I would ever bring Chris or Dale into it is if Brian refused to repent, because Jesus said, if Brian refuses to repent, I go and take two or three witnesses and I go back to Brian.
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You know why? Because I might be wrong.
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Because I might have went to Brian and said, Brian, you're in sin, and Brian said, no I'm not, and I go to Chris and I say, Chris, Brian's in sin, and Chris says, no he's not.
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You're wrong.
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This is why on the testimony of two or three witnesses will a judgment be established.
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Because I can't make the decision every time if something's right or wrong, because sometimes I can be wrong.
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So it's still not gossip if I had to go get somebody else.
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That's why I say, you know what, if we would just do life the way the author of life intended life to be done, we'd be so much better off.
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There was something I wrote in a sermon years ago and it sort of stuck with me.
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To do life the way the author of life intended life to be done is obviously the best way to do life.
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To do life the way the author of life intended life to be done is obviously the best way to do life.
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So when God says don't do, it's not because He's trying to put you in a fence like a dog and trying to hold you in like a dog and bind you from joy.
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He's putting the guardrail in front of the cliff.
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And He's saying don't go any further because there's a drop off past the gate.
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And one of the gates God puts up is the gate of gossip.
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The gate of rejoicing and wrongdoing.
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But it doesn't stop with gossip, and just to be clear, I don't want you to think.
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This week, Brother Andy mentioned it, so I'll bring it up.
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This week in New York City, they made a decision that abortion could be done up to the time of birth, which essentially establishes a new paradigm because up until now, even though those types of abortions could have been done, they were not unfettered.
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They were bound by certain restrictions.
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And those restrictions have essentially been lifted to essentially make abortion on demand from conception to birth a reality.
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New York's not the only place that does that, by the way, just so we're clear.
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But here's the thing, every one of the persons who was signing that document this week were smiling.
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That's rejoicing at wrongdoing.
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They clapped! They applauded! That's rejoicing at wrongdoing.
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So this doesn't just apply to gossip.
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This can apply across the board.
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You know what the Bible says? Woe to those who call evil good and call good evil.
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That's the idea here.
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That's the idea Paul's getting across.
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Love does not call evil good.
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And love does not call good evil.
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Because love is first pointed at who? God! The first commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, which means what God loves, I love.
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And what God hates, I hate.
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And you say, I didn't know God hated anything.
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God hates a lot of stuff.
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Six things God hates, yea, seven are an abomination to him.
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And there's a list in Proverbs of things that God hates.
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So when I love God, in fact I taught recently, I teach systematic theology on Wednesday nights and I was teaching the attributes of God and I taught on the hatred of God and the looks I got.
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Like really? Because people are used to hearing the love of God, the providence of God, the omniscience of God, omnipotence of God, all the characteristics of God.
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And when I got to the hatred of God, I was like wow! We took a step a little further than usual.
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If God loves life, he hates murder.
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Right? I can say in that sense he hates abortion.
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God allowing it to happen, ordaining these things to be, is compounding judgment on the heads of those who do it.
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And it's compounding judgment and it's dangerous.
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Alright, so that was the introduction.
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Now let's get to the sermon.
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Because that was all to get us to verse 7.
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Paul says, love does not rejoice in evil, love rejoices in the truth.
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Rejoices in God, his word, what he says is good, that's what we love, that's what we rejoice in.
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And when God is blessing you and I see God working through you, I should rejoice in that because that's good and true and noble and wonderful.
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I should not be jealous, envious toward you and you shouldn't be arrogant toward me if I'm not receiving the same blessing at the same time and vice versa.
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We should actually rejoice with those who rejoice, scripture says, and mourn with those who mourn.
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Right? We love one another enough to feel each other's burdens and carry each other's pains.
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Okay, so now verse 7, fourfold statement.
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After he finishes what love is not, love is not this, that or the other, he gets to verse 7 and he says, four things love does and it's the power of love, four ways in which love is powerful.
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Love bears, believes, hopes and endures.
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That's four words that I wanted to explain to you today and that's the heart of the message.
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Love bears, believes, hopes and endures.
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One, love bears.
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The word here actually can be defined endures.
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To bear something means to endure, right? So it's interesting because if you translate it endure, then what it says is love endures, believes, hopes and endures.
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So it sounds kind of like a redundancy.
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And I actually think there is.
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I think there's a redundancy here that's built in.
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I think it's something called a chiasm.
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A chiasm is a statement that says something in a form.
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It's a form of literature and I would have to have a board to exactly show you how this works.
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But like when Jesus said, man was not made for the Sabbath but the Sabbath was made for man.
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That's a chiasm, right? It's an expression.
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It's a way of expressing something in a way that in its literary form expresses a truth in two different ways.
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And so I think that this is a chiasm and I think that what we have here at the beginning when it says bears and at the end when it says endures, I think those two are connected and I think the two middle ones are connected.
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Faith and hope are connected.
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How do you define faith? Evidence of things hoped for, right? The Bible says that.
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The very definition of faith has the word hope in it in Scripture, right? So I think the two outer things, bears and endures, are connected and I think the two inner things are also connected and I think the two outer things deal with what's happening here and the two, or what's going on now and the two inner things look to what's coming in the future.
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Right now we bear and right now we endure and we look forward to with faith and hope.
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See, so the outer things are looking at the now and the other things are looking toward the forward.
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So I do think there's a pattern in his language.
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I don't think any of this is by accident and I don't think Paul is rambling.
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That's what I'm trying to say.
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When I say there's a redundancy, it's a built-in purposeful redundancy, right? Love bears, love believes, love hopes, love endures.
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What does bear mean though? The word, it's a neat word.
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I love it when I find out new stuff about words.
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The word bears here is the word stego in the Greek.
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Anybody have any idea what we might use that word for elsewhere? A stego source? You know what a stegosaurus is? I see all the little kids, dinosaurs, right? You know what a stegosaurus is? A stegosaurus is a dinosaur that on its back has big plates that protect itself.
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And the word stego means roof or covering.
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And so it's called a roof lizard.
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That's what stegosaurus literally means, a roof lizard.
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And so now that you've connected that to something in your mind, now get the idea of what Paul is saying.
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What does love do? Love protects.
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It covers.
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It cares for whatever the object of the love is.
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It's over it.
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It's concealing it.
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It's keeping it.
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It's the opposite of gossip.
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See, I knew I was going to tie it all together, didn't you? See, because what we talked about earlier was gossip.
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And what does gossip do? Gossip doesn't cover.
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Gossip doesn't protect.
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Gossip spreads and perniciously so.
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Love protects.
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It bears.
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You know what 1 Peter 4, 8 says? Love does what? Covers a multitude of sins.
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Now, having said that, I want to clarify something.
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This doesn't mean we turn a blind eye to sin.
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And it doesn't mean that sin is never exposed.
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Sometimes sin has to be exposed.
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In fact, in 1 Corinthians 5, what did Paul say? The church was in error because it had not dealt with the man who was having illicit sex with his stepmother.
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He said, I can't believe this is going on and nobody has done anything about it.
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Right? So it's not turning a blind eye.
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But sin is never dealt with with gossip.
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You don't stop one problem by creating another.
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In fact, the whole idea.
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I already talked about church discipline.
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I want to go back.
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But the whole idea of church discipline.
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You know what the idea of church discipline is? The whole intention of it is for protection.
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First, it protects the person.
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Right? Because if they're in sin, they need to be called to repentance because they need to be drawn back to the Lord.
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And we're trying to win them.
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The whole idea is protection.
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We're not trying to condemn.
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We're trying to cause them to repent and draw them back to the Lord.
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We're trying to help them.
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We're trying to protect them.
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When we go and get two witnesses, we're trying to ensure that we're not wrong.
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We're trying to ensure that we're right in our judgment.
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If they're brought before the church and excommunicated, it's for the protection of the church.
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Because now the church has a danger.
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There's someone in the church who's bringing danger into the church.
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Like Achan in the Old Testament who brought sin into the camp.
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And the people of Israel died as a result of sin being in the camp.
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And so there's always about protection.
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Love protects.
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In fact, if you have the NIV, that's how it translates this passage.
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It doesn't say love bears all things.
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It says love protects.
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Because that's what it means.
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Love protects.
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As parents, don't we want to protect our children? It's natural because love protects.
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Somebody messes with our kids, we become mama bear.
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We become papa bear.
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Because we want to protect our children from worldly harms, worldly influences, worldly pursuits, as the best the Lord will allow.
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But you know what? In reality, we can't always protect our children from the consequences of their actions.
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If our children choose to dive headlong into sin, we try to protect them.
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But ultimately, we can't always protect them.
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So it's important to understand that we take this passage of encouraging us not to turn a blind eye.
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Because protection doesn't mean to simply close our eyes and say it's not happening.
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Because that's dangerous too.
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If I sin, I need to repent.
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If you sin, you need to repent.
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We need to be honest with one another.
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Would you be honest with your spouse? Sometimes it's hardest to be honest with the people we live with.
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I tell you what though, I'll be honest with you.
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The hardest times I've ever been called to repentance has been by my wife.
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And when I say hardest times, hardest to accept.
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Because I know how right she is, and I don't like it.
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Because she knows me better than anybody.
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She calls me to repentance, that's real love.
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Because she knows she's got to live with whatever...
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If I get angry, or if I get upset by her telling me where I'm wrong.
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And that's where I as a man have to learn to be willing to accept correction, even from my spouse.
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And by the way, this goes both ways ladies.
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And I mean that true.
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If you are a person who in your marriage will not accept correction from your spouse, you are in sin.
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Or you are sinning when you don't accept correction from your spouse.
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Because they're the person who God has charged to live with you all the time.
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And thus they know more about you than anyone.
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And calling someone to repentance is not an act of hatred, it's an act of protection.
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It's an act of love, it's this very first thing, love bears all things.
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And part of bearing might be loving them enough to call them to repentance.
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I don't know how churches do it that don't believe in repentance.
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Do you know there's churches that don't believe in repentance? There are churches that believe that you can get saved and not repent.
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In fact there are some churches who would say we teach work salvation because we teach repentance as part of faith.
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And they would say that's works based salvation.
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Hogwash, Greek word baloney, that's what it is.
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It's just wrong.
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Faith without repentance is not faith.
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And repentance without faith is not true repentance.
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So calling each other to repentance is part of living the Christian life.
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It's a daily repentance, it's a daily walk.
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And so the protection of calling each other to repentance is part of this.
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One of the best protections we can give anyone is to point them to Christ.
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We have someone in our life, whoever it may be, me, my wife, my children, my friends.
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Boyfriends are hard to call to repentance, aren't they? Because they're my friends.
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I don't want to hurt your feelings.
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And everybody wears it on their shoulder nowadays, don't they? Feelings are right here, just ready to get knocked off.
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If you talk about a chip on your shoulder, you used to use that phrase.
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It just means they wear it up here and it's just sitting right there, just ready to fall off.
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You look at me sideways and we're not friends anymore.
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And now, how can we have an honest relationship that way? How can we have an honest relationship if I can't tell you or you can't tell me? How can we really protect each other if we can't be honest with one another? Most people think enduring means simply just shutting up.
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That's not what it means.
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It doesn't mean just to sit quietly.
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It means to bear with that person when they're going through it, endure with them as they're struggling through it, and love them through it, not ignore it.
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We've become so good at ignoring sin, haven't we? We've become fantastic, except for when we're on the phone with somebody else who it's not them.
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I keep going back to that, don't I? I do want to get through at least one verse, so let me get through these.
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Bears all things, that's protection.
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It's enduring.
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And again, I think it's also with the last word, endure.
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I think they go together.
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Bearing, protecting.
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Bearing, enduring.
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Loving that person enough to stand with them in the battle.
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Right? Taking the arrows if necessary.
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Taking the pain which is certain to come.
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Believes and hopes.
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As I said, I think these two go together.
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Believes all things.
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By the way, this does not mean you believe everything the person you love says.
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Ha, ha, ha.
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Because that would be...
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Well, what do we call somebody who believes everything? Gullible? Naive? Pitiful? Maybe that last one was one I added.
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Really, what do you call somebody who believes everything they hear? Gullible and pitiful.
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Or naive and pitiful.
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And they really are.
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And I do not believe Paul is saying love is naivete.
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I don't think that's what he's saying here.
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Some believe it is, I don't think so.
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Here's what I think it means.
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And again, I don't always have all the answers.
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I'm sorry that I don't.
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But I think what it means is this.
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If you don't care for someone, and someone tells us that person has done something wrong, are you more inclined to believe it simply because someone says it? Are you willing to believe the best about that person? That's one thing.
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But more than that, are you willing to believe the best for that person? I don't believe this failure identifies who they are in Christ.
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And I'm going to pray for them in their error.
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I believe God can save this person.
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I don't believe God doesn't have the power to save this person.
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That's believing all things.
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You can't believe for them, you can't get saved for them.
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But you can believe for them in the sense that you can believe God can do it.
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Man, I've met some wayward folks.
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I've met people that are so far from God that they would literally say they hate God, they hate Scripture, they hate the church.
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And I believe God can still save them.
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And so what do I do for them? I go to God on my knees and I say, God, you're the only one who can break that heart of stone.
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And I'm going to believe you because you're the only one who can do it.
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Because I love them, I'm going to believe you on their behalf and say, God, please do what only you can do.
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And that's how I think it ties to hope.
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Because now I hope with confidence what God can do.
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Hope is an interesting thing.
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Because hope, really and truly, in Christian...
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When you think of the word hope, you probably, and I don't mean to ascribe something to you, but most people, when they hear the word hope, they apply worldly standards to the word hope and worldly definitions.
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So when you think of the word hope, you apply it to the idea of something that is a wish.
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Hope is wishing.
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That is not the way the Bible used the word hope.
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The way the Bible, when it talks about our blessed hope, when it talks about the hope that we have in Christ.
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You know what hope is in the Bible? Trust.
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Trust.
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Psalm 28, verse 6.
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Blessed be the Lord, for he has heard the voice of my pleas for mercy.
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The Lord is my strength and my shield.
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In him my heart trusts.
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That's hope.
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Confidence.
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Confidence.
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In fact, I would say this.
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The definition of hope from a biblical perspective is confidence in God.
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And do you know what the word confidence means? From the Latin, confide, with faith.
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So faith and hope, like faith and repentance, go together.
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Because when I believe, I can live in hope.
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I can live in trust.
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And that's what love does for me.
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Love allows me to be able to protect and be protected.
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Love allows me to believe because I'm believing God.
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Love allows me to hope because my hope is in him.
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And love allows me to endure because he is my strength.
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Isaiah 26, verse 3.
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You keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is steadfast on you.
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You keep him in peace whose mind is on you.
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If you have problem with peace, if you have problem with doubt, if you have problem and struggling, and I have and I've struggled with real difficulties, doubts and depressions and battles in the dark night of the soul, like Spurgeon talked about.
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And the only place I can find my hope, the only place I can find my trust is in you.
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There is nothing else.
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I don't have faith in you.
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And I don't want you to have faith in me.
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Not in the sense that you trust that everything I say is right and everything I do is right.
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But I want you to love me and I want to love you.
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And how do I love you? First, I seek to protect you.
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Part of preaching is protection, right? I'm protecting, hopefully protecting you from false teaching by giving you good teaching and showing you what the false teaching looks like compared to the true.
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That's my hope.
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And then I have faith, I have faith in God for you, that God is going to do what he is working out in your life.
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I'm going to believe him on your behalf and I'm going to hope to him on your behalf.
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And then I'm going to put up with you.
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Yep.
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Because that's really more so the meaning.
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The words at the beginning and the end, though they both mean endure, they're two different words.
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The first word means roof or covering.
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The last word literally means to put up with.
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It means to put up with.
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Let me ask you this question.
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When was the last time you legitimately and longingly cried out to God for someone whom you considered to be an enemy? When was the last time, I'll say it again, when was the last time you legitimately and longingly cried out to God for someone you considered an enemy? Jesus said, Matthew chapter 5, Love your enemies.
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Pray for those who persecute you.
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For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? This is what's different about this love because this love is expressed not just to those who reciprocate.
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This love is expressed to even those who hate you.
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United Bible Society has a commentary.
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It's a handbook on the text and it helps understand the way the words are used.
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And this is how it offers an alternative translation to this text.
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And I want to give it to you as I draw to a close.
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This is what this text means and I think it's very accurate.
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Love enables us to endure everything.
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It enables us in every circumstance to keep on believing, to keep our confidence in God and to remain patient no matter what happens.
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Love is the power that does that.
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And that's why in faith and hope and love, the greatest of these is love.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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So much, Lord, has been left unsaid because there's so much that could be said.
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Lord, might you enable us? Might you empower us? Might you give us the grace to love? That when we have a brother who sinned against us, that we would love him enough to go to him, not to others.
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That when we have someone in our life, someone in our family, someone of our friends that has injured us, who has sinned, that we might love them, Lord, and endure with them.
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Not turning a blind eye, not covering our eyes and plugging our ears, but loving them.
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Father, that we might always understand that our love is not from us, but it's your love flowing through us.
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For we cannot do these things on our own, but only by the power of the spirit whom you have placed in us.
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Because you loved us so much that you sent your son to die for us and you sent your spirit to live in us.
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And we thank you for the love of God, which comes through Christ Jesus, our Lord.
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And it's in his name we pray.
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Amen.