I Corinthians 13:7-13
Why is God
worthy of praise?
2 Samuel
22:4 says He is worthy because He saves us. Psalm 48:1 says He is worthy
because of the good things He has done. Psalm 96:4 says He is worthy because He
is real, He made the heavens and the earth, He is holy, He reigns. Psalm 145:3
says He is worthy because of His greatness which no one can fathom.
Last week,
we talked a fair bit about football. I
can’t imagine why ;-). We know that people
study football games. People will watch
and rewatch “the great ones.” I know I
guy who is a diehard Packer fan from Wisconsin.
He’s watched Packers’ football games from before he was born. They watch that last amazing drive just to
see it and marvel at it.
This week, I
got to thinking about how the Bible is better than football. I think one clear reason is the excitement
factor. The death and resurrection of
Jesus Christ is the comeback story of all time.
There is nothing like it. Talk
about underdogs. What in the world was
Jesus thinking about when He picked the twelve disciples? Well, He wasn’t thinking “in the world.” Jesus’
thinking was “out of this world” and direct from God the Father.
While I was
preparing for this message, I was listening to some instrumental worship
songs. The song “Above All” most often
associated with Michael W. Smith but actually written by Lenny Leblanc and Paul
Baloche came up. The words are so
beautiful:
Above all
powers
Above all
kings
Above all
nature and all created things
Above all
wisdom and all the ways of man
You were
here before the world began
Above all
kingdoms
Above all
thrones
Above all
wonders the world has ever known
Above all
wealth and treasures of the earth
There's no
way to measure what you're worth
Crucified
Laid behind
the stone
You lived to
die
Rejected and
alone
Like a rose
trampled on the ground
You took the
fall
And thought
of me
Above all
Jesus gave
up all His majesty and thought of us. He
took the punishment for our sins, so that we could live forever. He is worthy of praise. I think we can echo the prayer of Jacob from
Genesis 32:10, “I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies and of all the
truth which You have shown Your servant …”
Let’s pray:
Lord Jesus,
You are worthy of praise. And, we are
unworthy of Your love. But thankfully,
Your decision to love us does not depend on anything we’ve done or what we
think. You love us and You keep on
loving us. Help us live persistently in
Your love and help us to love persistently like You love us. Teach us these things and enable us to do
them, we pray. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
Carl
introduced this current series “Of First Importance” a couple of weeks
ago. He explained that this is really the
conclusion of our earlier series “Broken but Indispensable” which took us
through the first 12 chapters of the book of I Corinthians. That series took place last year from May
through early October. We took a break from I Corinthians just before and during
the Christmas season, and in this new year we’ve picked back up where we left
off in October so that we wouldn’t feel rushed through the fantastic material
in the latter part of I Corinthians. The goal was to take our time so that the
content would sink in, so that we would have time to explore the practical
applications of the material.
You can go
back to the Message Archive through the church website (clemsoncc.org) and find
those earlier messages. If you want an
overview of chapters 1-12 of I Corinthians, you can take a look at the message
from two weeks ago (January 8th).
In case you didn’t know, we have the transcript and audio of most all
the messages. That means you can either
read them or listen to them (or both).
Today, we’re
in the heart of I Corinthians 13. This
chapter is known as the love chapter. Not
surprisingly, this chapter is often read during Christian weddings. Many believers have memorized portions of
this chapter, and it is easy to see why.
This is the chapter that Paul introduces by saying, “Now I will show you
the most excellent way,” and then he concludes by writing that “these three
remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
The
introduction to this series asked a couple of questions: What does a life lived all-out for Christ
look like? How should our faith in Christ transform our priorities, our
relationships, our fellowship? Paul is painting a beautiful picture of the
submitted and transformed life lived for Christ and in Christ, both in this
life and in the life to come.
We’re
talking about the most excellent of ways and the greatest of all
virtues. It’s the kind of thing where we
should lean in. We should scoot up on
the edge of our seats. We should wake up
and try not to daydream.
This past
week, I was listening to a podcast that I enjoy. It’s about storytelling. This particular episode caught me off guard a
bit. The two speakers were talking about
the need to have extrabiblical reasoning of why you should behave a certain
way. Now, I tell plenty of stories about
things that happen which aren’t in the Bible, so that wasn’t what sounded
strange to my ears.
One of the
speakers was a weekly church-goer. The
other was a self-acknowledged atheist.
They were agreeing that it was important to think critically about why
certain behaviors or character traits are important from a practical point of
view. In a day-to-day sense, why is love
is better than hate? In relationship,
why is peace better than quarrelling?
Again, these aren’t bad ideas.
The golden rule (Matthew 7:12) is clearly thinking through your potential
actions to others based on how they would make you feel if they happened to
you.
But then,
the church-goer said it is good to think critically about how we should act and
justify our behavior using our own rationale as a basis. In other words, I should be polite because I
think or believe or have decided it is the right thing to do. Not that I should be polite because it is
the right thing to do.
I thought,
“Wow, I wonder what kind of messages this guy is getting in the church he
attends. I wonder how much of the Bible
he’s read. And, I wish I could
communicate some truths about the Bible to him.”
We’ve been
studying the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5:22-23 as a family. In the last week or so, we’ve been talking
about kindness. We looked at what the
Bible says about kindness. What is kindness?
We were struck that kindness is far more than we realized.
Kindness is
more than a simple gesture, although simple gestures can be kind. Holding the door open for someone is kind,
but real kindness is more than that.
Kindness is connected to forgiveness and loving and believing the best. Kindness is ultimately acting toward others
in the way that God acts toward us. “It
is the kindness of God that leads us to repentance” (Romans 2:4); “When the
kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, He saved us not on the basis of
our righteous acts, but because of His mercy” (Titus 3:4-5); Kindness is not
paying back wrong for wrong but rather paying back good for wrong. (I Thessalonians 5:15, Matthew 5:38-48).
Apart from
God’s Word, we can’t see what the true nature of kindness really is. We see all sorts of acts of kindness around
us. Sometimes, those acts of kindness
are done because it is practical.
Sometimes, those acts of kindness are done because it brings a good
feeling. True kindness though is an
enduring service and patience which forgives wrongs and slights. It finds its true example in how God relates
to us. We need this explained to us
through the Word of God and exemplified in the lives of those who love God and
His Word.
And, this
love we read of in I Corinthians 13 and throughout the Bible is much more than
we are likely to realize apart from the Bible.
Carl pointed out before: The love
described in this chapter is not romantic love, it is a love much greater and
much more applicable to all situations and relationships. More than BFF love. It is not merely tolerance, although agape
love can put up with a lot. This love is
the kind of love that God loves us with.
It is a love that sacrifices, and it is a love that rescues.
Let’s look
together at our first verses:
It [Love] always protects, always trusts,
always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. –I Corinthians 13:7-8a
Love
always. In the Greek, the word we see
translated always can also be translated as all, all things, or every. You may know this verse with wording like
love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all
things” as in the NASB or KJV.
Each of the
four words is a “big” word. I don’t mean
that it’s a long word. It’s just that
all four of them are marvelous by themselves.
When you take them together, it’s just fantastic, amazing. Spurgeon named them the “sweet companions of
love.”
The word
translated “protects” [stego] is used
four times in the New Testament. It
means to cover over, preserve, or endure.
Paul uses this word earlier in I Corinthians 9:12 where he says rather
than take money from the Corinthians using one of the rights of an apostle or
gospel preacher, Paul and his companions decided to endure (put up with
anything) than hinder the gospel of Christ.
So the word means to protect, but it’s not simply to shelter. It’s more than that. It’s like the way that a good parent would
protect their child from a harmful influence.
The parent bears a hardship to keep the child safe and at peace.
The word
translated “trusts” is sometimes translated “believes” [pisteuo]. It is used 248
times in the New Testament. It means to
think to be true, to be persuaded of, to credit, place confidence in, or put
your faith in. A familiar passage that
uses this word is the father of the demon possessed boy who came with his son
to the disciples for healing, but they could not heal the boy. When Jesus arrives, the father asks Jesus if
He can do anything. Jesus answers,
“Everything is possible for him who believes” to which the father replies, “Lord
I believe, help my unbelief.” Mark 9:22-24
In practice,
we should not believe lies. If there is
wrongdoing, we need to understand and take action. But, we should not be suspicious of
wrongdoing first. We should choose to
believe the best about others.
The word
translated “hopes” [elpizo] is used 28
times in the New Testament. It means to
hope, or in a religious sense, to wait for salvation with joy and full
confidence; to hopefully to trust in.
This is not a vain hope, but rather a confident hope. It is also used in a financial sense of the
“hope” of being repaid when making a loan.
While it’s not guaranteed that the bank will always be repaid, they don’t
wishfully “hope” to get repaid. They expect
to get repaid. Luke 6:34, Acts 24:26. Love hopes for situations to be
redeemed. It hopes for good to come out
of bad situations (Romans 8:28). Love is
not pessimistic. It looks to the future
as good rather than fearfully.
The word
translated “perseveres” is sometimes translated “endures” [hypomeno]. It is used 17
times in the New Testament. It means to
remain, to stay behind, don’t run away, to bear bravely and calmly. In Acts 17:14, the brothers “evacuated” Paul
from Berea and sent him to Athens, but Silas and Timothy stayed behind. Love doesn’t give up. It doesn’t run away. It stays at its post. It keeps on doing the things we’ve read
above. It keeps on protecting. It keeps on believing. It keeps on hoping which flows into our next
phrase.
Love never
fails. The words translated “never
fails” are used 16 and 90 times respectively in the New Testament [oudepote pipto] The word translated “never” means not even at
any time, i.e. never at all:—neither at any time, never, nothing at any time. The word translated “fail” means to fall,
fall down, be cast down, or to fail.
Love doesn’t run out of gas. It
doesn’t fall down. It doesn’t get
knocked over. It keeps on going.
But where there are prophecies, they will
cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge,
it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when
perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.—I Corinthians 13:8b-10
These three (prophecies,
tongues, and knowledge) will cease because they are partial in nature. They exist for a time because they are
needed. But, they will be unnecessary
when the perfect (what is complete) has come.
There have been several interpretations for what the perfection to come
is, but in light of the context, especially verse 12, it seems like Paul is
pointing to the second coming of Jesus.
When Jesus comes in all His glory, the intermediate things will
disappear. Prophecy, tongues and
knowledge will no longer be needed because everyone will have the knowledge of
God and His law written on their hearts and placed in their minds. (Jeremiah 31:33, Hebrews 8:10, 10:16)
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I
thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put
childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then
we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as
I am fully known.—I Corinthians 13:11-12
Yesterday I
had a rather humorous conversation with Elijah, our four year old. I was sitting at the dining room table eating
some breakfast alone before I came over to the church to work on this message. I was looking at my phone and reading about
the inauguration a bit.
Elijah asked
me, “What are you looking at Dad?”
“The news,”
I answered.
He was
silent for a few moments, so I said rather flatly “We have a new president, you
know,” wondering if he even knew what a president was.
He was
silent again for a few moments. Then, he
said, “They’re going to build a house next door. There was a bulldozer. It’s all flat now. Come and see.”
I stood up
to follow him, and he got excited. He
ran down the hallway, stopping for just a second to think about whether to look
out his bedroom window or our bedroom window (which happen to be on the end of
the house). Since his brothers were
asleep, he made a quick turn into our room, and then he showed me the view from
my own bedroom window.
The lot
adjacent to us on that side of the house has never had a house built on
it. It was completely wooded with trees
more than 50 years old. They had cleared
the lot in December and had done some grading.
I’ve looked at it several times over the weeks. I see it every time I turn into our
driveway. But when faced with my “news”,
Elijah wanted to share some “news” with me, too. He was trying to act like a grownup, but it
came across with a child’s reasoning.
Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed
every minute of our conversation. I
enjoyed it most because there are only so many of those conversations left to
be had. It will be all too soon for me
when Elijah puts childish thinking behind him.
And some day, if the Lord tarries, he’ll be explaining current events to
me.
Paul’s
illustration about dim mirrors may be a little hard for us to grasp. Every bathroom we go into and even other
rooms have mirrors where you see your image clearly. Most cars have three mirrors. In Pauls’ time, most mirrors were bronze. You can sort of see yourself, but there’s
hardly enough detail to even check your hair. Here’s a picture of a few.
Paul is not
saying that gifts (like prophecy, tongues, or knowledge) are unnecessary. He is saying that there are childish ways of
thinking and mature ways of thinking.
There is a growing up that happens where we put childish thinking
aside. We should not emphasize gifts at
the expense of love. Love comes first
and remains last. Right now, we see this
power of love only dimly. We do not yet
see it in full. One day, we will know
God to the fullness with which He knows us.
We will know God to the fullest extent possible for finite creatures,
and it will be marvelous.
We won’t
have a feeling of doubt or emptiness or loneliness. We will see God face to face and it will be
wonderful, joy-filled, and wrapped in love.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and
love. But the greatest of these is love.--I Corinthians 13:13
God is love.
(I John 4:8) God’s command to us is to love: love Him and love one another. (John
13:34-35) Love supersedes all because it outlasts all. Long after the gifts we seek after are no
longer necessary, love remains. Love
will still be the governing principle for everything God does and will do. Likewise, it will be the governing principle
that guides and controls all that we God’s chosen people will do forever.
If you
endeavor to love more, it’s like you’re studying on the graduate level. God’s way is the way of love. Writing this, I thought of the book by Robert
Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I
Learned in Kindergarten. In the
book, he wrote, “Wisdom was not there at the top of the graduate-school
mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School.” God’s mysteries are deeper than the depths of
the sea, but we don’t have to understand every mystery of God to enjoy loving
relationship with Him and others.
Fulghum also
wrote something that is harder to hear.
There is a chapter of his book about testing. His thought was that it might not be a bad
idea to have some remedial testing every now and again. Things like driving and balancing a checkbook
and how the government works. His
observation about love is discouraging.
He said, “But love may have to be left off the exam. Most of us will
never learn.”
I’ve kept a
running list of interesting quotes for the last ten years or so. Last time I remember paying attention, there
were 282 quotes on the list. A few are
Bible verses. Some come from books both
fiction and nonfiction. Lots of them are
about work or leadership. But recently,
I added a quote for the first time from a person who has said a lot of
important, wise and noteworthy things over the years. Yes, the quote came from my wife,
Melissa. She said it during a family
devotional time last year. Like I
mentioned earlier, we have been talking about the fruits of the Spirit from
Galatians 5:22-23. At that point, we
were talking about love.
This is what
Melissa said, “Err on the side of love if you don’t know what to do because
love never fails.” Man, put that up
there with C.S. Lewis and Chesterton. If
you’re going to make a “mistake,” let that mistake be from loving too
much. Because there’s no such thing as
loving too much.
Where does
this kind of unbelievable never-failing love come from?
Well, it
certainly doesn’t come from within us.
It must come from God. How? It comes through His Spirit living in and
working through us. I’ve mentioned the
fruit of the Spirit several times. The
Bible frequently uses agricultural imagery.
I think in part, this is because there is still so much mystery in
agriculture. Why do the plants
grow? Why do seeds germinate? Why do plants grow up and roots grow
down? What makes the fruit grow and
mature?
Don’t get me
wrong, we know a lot about a lot of these things. At the same time, we don’t know
everything. And yet, the plants still
grow, and they produce a harvest.
This kind of
sacrificial, powerful love must come from God.
Our role in large part is to “get out of the way”.
For the flesh desires what is contrary to
the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict
with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you are
led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. The acts of the flesh are
obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft;
hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions,
factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did
before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. But
the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there
is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its
passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the
Spirit. –Galatians 5:17-25
I think I
underestimate God’s power a lot of the time.
I think, too, that I underestimate God’s desire to demonstrate His love
through me. Most of the time, it’s not
about me needing more ability or skill.
It’s about me being willing to go where God sends.
Here are
three recent examples which may seem trivial to you, but I think are significant
in God’s economy:
Friday, we
had a power outage at the plant.
Supposedly, it was due to a squirrel in the substation. It took power out to our entire site and an
adjacent factory. I don’t know how many
gigawatts of power we’re talking about, but it was a lot.
At the time
the power went out, I was talking to a brother in Christ who is going through a
really tough time. It’s the kind of time
where tough things are happening in parallel in different areas of his life. We were talking about some work stuff, and
certain aspects are beginning to seem hopeless.
Right in the midst of the “what if’s”, the power went out. There’s nothing quite like the quiet of a
power outage in a manufacturing plant.
You can hear your footfalls. You
can hear the shuffle of your clothes as you move. There’s no air whistling in the ducts. No hum of equipment running. The only noise is the noise that people
make. The machine noise is completely
gone. The illustration to us was
powerful. The things which seem
insurmountable to us are like light switches to God.
It wasn’t
necessary that God immediately change this brother’s circumstances. It was really like the Scott Krippayne song
from a few years back. “Sometimes He
calms the storm, and other times He calms His child.” The power came back on in about an hour, long
enough for this brother and me to go have lunch together. The day was made more difficult because of
the power outage, but we were both more encouraged rather than less. If I hadn’t taken the time to speak with this
brother at the time the power went out, His message “in the storm” might have
been missed by either or both of us.
This next example
is pretty silly. We have a coffee maker
in our office, but we don’t have a sink.
So, one of the hats I find myself wearing at work is water boy. There is a filtered water dispenser in our
canteen where we usually get a gallon of water at a time. For whatever reason, this week, the water
flow rate dropped by more than 50%.
Instead of taking about a minute to get a gallon of water, it now takes
more than three! The dispenser is used
by a lot of people. Most folks use a
smaller container, so I often let them go ahead of me. As a result, I’ve had the chance to have
conversations with a number of people I rarely talk to, and even with people I
don’t know. One of the conversations was
an exhortation to restart our Bible study which I hadn’t done since the New
Year. There was always something getting
in the way, and I hadn’t gritted my teeth to “Just do it!” We met on Thursday, and during the time somebody
asked about everyone’s denominational backgrounds. The answer was pretty surprising, at least to
me: Lutheran, Presbyterian, Assembly of God, Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, and
Evangelical. Without a slow water
filter, I was letting that kind of love and unity among so many with different
backgrounds go unrealized.
The last
example is another example of my hard-headedness or hard-heartedness (or both). My former boss decided to take another job
outside our company a little more than a year ago. He keeps in contact with different folks at
our company because he’s just a really good brother. Sometime around the beginning of November, he
let me know that there was a lady in our plant who was going through some tough
circumstances. I kept it in mind and
expected God to bring about a meeting.
Some other people who are closer to her were in the loop, so I comforted
myself with the fact that if something really serious were up, I’d hear about
it.
In a
manufacturing plant, most of the time things run along more or less okay. Usually, you’re unsatisfied and know that
things could be better, but the lines are running, car parts are being made,
and the company is making money. Then,
sometimes things go “bump in the night” and sometimes things come to a
screeching halt like the power outage.
About the middle of November, a problem arose in our production. It was something serious and persistent. But, it wasn’t exactly my responsibility to
deal with it. So, I didn’t. The “coincidental” thing was that this
problem was centered right at the area where this lady was working. When it finally got to the point that I knew
I had to get involved, the meeting that I was waiting for came about. I got to talk with this lady, and man she has
been through it. A couple of years ago
she had skin cancer which I knew about and had prayed with her about. Then, her daughter had been in the hospital
last year, and this lady had a heart attack while she was in the hospital with
her daughter. If she hadn’t been at the
hospital, she said she likely would have died because she would have waited too
long to seek help. Now, her son is
dealing with dialysis because of a chronic illness he has. Then, in the midst of all this, this lady is
working a full time job which requires some overtime and is dealing with a
stressful work-related crisis on a daily basis.
I asked if I could pray for her which she readily accepted. I need to go and visit with her again.
Opportunities
to share the love of God abound. Most of
the time, we don’t need more knowledge.
Mainly, we just need to be available.
We need to ask God to fill us with his Spirit. His command:
Be filled with the Spirit.
(Ephesians 5:18). His Promise: He
will always answer when we pray according to His will. (1 John 5:14, 15).
Then, when
God brings situations to our mind or heart or in front of us, we need to be
available to respond in love. I am
convinced that this is the most important thing we can do. If we respond to the Lord’s leading in these
situations, the rest of the details will take care of themselves. We don’t get to ignore or neglect our
responsibilities, but when we love God and others first, I think you will find
that the other things will take care of themselves. (Matthew 6:33, “Seek first the kingdom of God
and His righteousness, and all these thing will be given to you as well.”)
“Our prayers
may be awkward. Our attempts may be feeble. But since the power of prayer is in
the one who hears it and not the one who says it, our prayers do make a
difference.”—Max Lucado
Our love, if
it is offered in the Spirit of God, in accordance with what we see in these
verses from all of I Corinthians 13, that love will have an eternal impact for
good.
Let’s pray.
Lord God,
teach us how to love each other. We know
that neither our heart nor our strength are sufficient sources of the kind of
love that we’ve read about these last weeks.
Fill each life here with Your Spirit.
Enable us to follow the most excellent way. Pour out Your love, we pray. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
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