“The Foundation Of Love”

I want to invite you to take your Bibles please this morning and let's find 1 Corinthians Chapter 13.  1 Corinthians, Chapter 13.

Jonathan Edwards, one of America's, or one of the greatest minds America ever produced wrote an entire book on this ….actually they were compiled sermons of his… called "Charity and Its Fruits" and you will know if you still read from the King James Bible that that is the translation of the word agape that we translate love in most of the newer translations.  I will reference him several times because I'm not sure too many people have spoken better about this chapter than he has.  I'll open with a quote.  You have to listen closely, he's pretty thick, actually in some of his books he's next to impossible to read, but this is not that thick; it just makes sense.

"If your heart is full of love it will find vent. You will find or make ways enough to express your love in deeds.  When a fountain abounds with water it will send forth streams.  Consider that as a principle of love it is the main principle in the heart of a real Christian, so the labor of love is the main business of the Christian life."

Edwards helped us last week actually come to the conclusion that love is the sum of all Christian virtue.  Love is the grace given to us by God as we share his nature because God is love.  It is actually the fountainhead of all other Christian expressions.  The Fruit of the Spirit begins with love and some people think that the rest of them are simply expressions of that love.  It is in this chapter that he tells us that with all the spiritual gifts that they had at Corinth, that he was going to show them a more excellent way, more excellent than tongues, more excellent than prophecy, more excellent than healings and miracles and a more excellent way was love.  At the end of the chapter he says:

"So now faith, hope and love abide these three, but the greatest of these is love."  

But if that were not enough, when our Lord Jesus Himself was asked what is the first and greatest commandment, he told us that the first and greatest was, "Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God the LORD is one and you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength, and the second is like unto it.  You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these hang all the law and prophets."

That's the whole of scriptures up to that time.  Now, if the Lord Jesus said that doing of love and the living of love towards God and man was the fulfilling of all the law, then that's where Edwards begins to come up with this idea that love is the sum of all Christian virtue.

I think what I’m going to do is just pull out about 5 things that are overviews that I have learned as I have been reading this chapter and studying it, and then I hope we can sink down into it bit, and, in all honesty, I hope it makes you very uncomfortable because then I'll have some company.  This has been a very uncomfortable passage to study.  If you believe God has spoken and you believe that this is what God has spoken and that this is God's Word to his people and this is how he expects us to live and you want to obey him, it will probably make you uncomfortable.  But it will be like looking at some strange thing you have never conceived of before, that in some ways makes you uncomfortable and makes you want to back off, but has a stronger power of drawing you in that says 'I want that, I want that, I want to do that, I want to be that." I hope it has that effect on you as it is having on me.

First, some insights:

First, our world currently and always has been kept in action by love.  Let me state it again and then you're going to wrestle with it a minute.  This world, presently and at all times, is kept in action by love.  Now, if you are thinking much you are thinking 'How could that possibly be?'  There is not an ounce of love in the paper.  It's all about bad news, but don't you know that people go to war over what they love.  If there was no love there probably wouldn't be war.  But it's tainted, skewed, sinful, corrupted love.  People love all kinds of things in life.  Does it take long to discover if you know someone that loves money, doesn’t their life display that money is their love.  Has it been hard lately to tell the people who love basketball?  What do they do?  Well, as soon as the NCAA tournament comes on, on comes the television.  Well, actually they have listened to pregame for 2 ½ hours on the radio on ESPN and then they are talking about who's going to win what and what's Seth's opinion and what's Clark's opinion and who is doing this and that and then they sit down and watch the game, and they throw things at the television and they act in a crazy way that you wish they would act if they were worshipping God because they show some kind of enthusiasm.  I watched 20,000 people on the TV last night watching the Kentucky State basketball championship; 20,000 people! Screaming like idiots!  Having a great time!  They were happy!  I wonder if they took a picture in church on a Sunday morning during the sermon would they think, "those people love God?" Whoa….

But the world is kept in action by love.  If you like honor and fame, what do you do?  You do everything you can because you love honor and fame.  What motivates your action?   Your love does.  Do you like to work in the yard?  What have you been doing lately?  Got any blisters to show it? Only love or your spouse will make you get blisters working in the yard.  [laughter]

So, first I see that the world is kept in action by love, and I didn't see that without Edwards' help.

Second, the Biblical concept of love is far greater than any conception of love I've ever had.  There were times I really did feel like I was looking at this strange beast. It made me back off, and then it draws me in. It's as if sometimes I've never seen it before, or never lived it before, when I look at it in all its beauty.

Third, this love is from God.  It can come from no other place and for it to be in the human heart, it has to be a grace, and, it is a grace given supernaturally at the new birth to all of God's children. This is one reason why it's the more excellent way.  Not all God's children prophesy, not all speak in tongues.  Not all have the gift of healing, but all of his children have love, because all of us have been made partakers of the divine nature and John said "God is love," Peter said "we are partakers of his nature,"  so we have this desire within us.  We have the ability within us because it is empowered by God.

Fourth insight: This love is not based on or derived from how people treat us.  It is not a response to what good they have done to us.  Love, according to the scriptures, this kind of love is an active principle within us to be lived out by God's power and according to God's instruction.  It isn't something you can generate on your own.  All human beings can love.  That’s the residual leftover of being created in the image of God.  But we don't love rightly unless God begins to remake our nature.

Fifth insight: Though this love is a gift of god, though it is a grace and empowered by him, this love must be pursued.  We find that in Chapter 14:1 "Pursue love."  You have to hunt it down.  You have to run it as if you were in a race to get to the finish line or you are chasing some elusive goal that you must have and you will not give up until you have it if you are going to love in this kind of manner, if I am we have to pursue it.  Why?  Well, simply for one God tells us to, that's his design in us for our growth and strengthening. 

How many in this room have been married more 20 years raise your hand?  Okay. Now put it back down.  How many of those of you who have been married more than 20 years have had problems in your marriage?  Those of you who didn't raise your hand, I have a psychiatrist that would gladly meet with you [laughter] and discover why you are numb to the realities of life.  A marriage is as strong as the loving ways in which you handle your problems. A problemless marriage is an oxymoron.  It is an impossibility.  You have a man and a women, that are of opposite sex, if that hasn't occurred to you.  They are from different backgrounds and more than likely different temperaments and we will let people divorce over incompatibility.  Compatibility wasn't a thing to begin with.  If you think you are compatible with that kind of person, somebody's taught you wrong about life. What makes a marriage strong is God's kind of love to where you don't love your spouse based on their performance, you love them because that's your nature and you don't respond to them according to what they do right or wrong.  You do the right thing to them all the time, and that means marriage many times is not a 50/50 proposition; some days it is 25/75.  The trouble is in deciding who does the 75 and who does the 25, right?  Because you're always doing the 75.  Sometimes you give the 95 and why don't they pick up the slack?  Well, the truth of the matter is, my friend, sometimes marriage is 100 / 0.  That's the marriage that thrives.  Because you see, as Warren Wiersbe said, "The bumps are what you climb on."  Adrian Rogers said, "The difference in a marriage that makes it and the marriage that doesn’t is how they handle their problems."  It's the problems and the tribulations that make you love one another.  When you go through difficulties with a spouse you find that you love them or they love you warts and all.  Do you know what it's like to be transparent, vulnerable before another human being and to find that they still love you unconditionally?  That is what makes a marriage strong.  You see, this love must be pursued and just like in marriage, with God and with people, because it's God's design for our growth and strengthening, and this love must be pursued because there are countless enemies to it.

A couple of things, maybe some things we don't take as seriously as we should in Christian growth would be indwelling sin, the world's system around us and the Devil and his demons.  Yes, I'm an educated intelligent person.  Yes, I believe in a personal Devil and hoards of demons that are around him because our Lord Jesus did and he confronted them and one the victory over them.  But they still roam the world and can cause problems for God's people.  The sin that dwelt in me is still alive in my flesh, though I've been given grace and I no longer have to give into it, it will always be there until the day I die, and when I try to love, my flesh wants to hate.  When somebody hurts my feelings I want to get back at them.  I don't know how to return good for evil in my own flesh, so if I don't pursue this grace of love, I may not even look different than the average lost person.  And what I'm telling you is that if you're going to love the way God says you're going to love, not only is it going to take devotion, it's going to take great discipline.

Jonathan Edwards said, "An envious Christian, a malicious Christian, a cold and hard-hearted Christian is the greatest absurdity and contradiction.  It is as if one should speak of dark brightness or a false truth."

1 Cor. 13:1-13

"If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am  a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. [2] And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. [3] If I give away all I have and if I deliver up my body to be burned, and have not love, I gain nothing. [4]"

That's very simple, it simply means what it says.  That if you could talk in the most beautiful of language, men's tongues, angel's tongues, but you have not love, you, my friend, are nothing more than a loud irritant.  If you have all of these prophetic powers and understand mysteries and knowledge, and faith enough to move a mountain, but you don't have love, you are a big Zero.  The supernatural gifts of God can be done through a donkey, but a donkey can't love; not this kind of love.  And if you give away all you have, if you are the most sacrificial person in the world, but you do it out of a motive different than love, your gain from that is nothing.  What we saw is the foundation of love.

Now, let's look at the function of love, and lord willing, we will see the duration of love next week.

Verse 4:  Here's today's text:  By the way, before we read it, it really isn't difficult to understand what he's saying here.  Our English words and the meaning of the Greek words are very, very similar, I mean, we could take them to the multi-levels and colors and make it more detailed, but take what you know of these words, read what it says, sink yourself into and let's find out our comfort level.

"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast, it is not arrogant or rude. [5] It does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful. "

You know, when your children are little and they haven't slept and you haven't slept and it's about 7:00 at night and you need to go to bed and they need to go to bed, they won't and you want to, it's really hard not to be irritable  at that time, isn't it"

"It is not irritable  or resentful. [6] It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth; [7] Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."

Let's break down those verses in a simple outline; help you get a grip on them and then we're just going to talk about them for a few minutes and then work on the application of them.  Sometimes this is difficult to understand because we want to push the writing into a mold that doesn’t fit.  This is the best way I think it fits, as I think about how Paul is writing and what he's doing, he is just overflowing with expression, some people think he has inserted a poem that was written or a hymn possibly that was written in his time, maybe one he constructed, but think of it in its simplest terms.  In verses 4-5, he is teaching us the specific actions of God-like love in our hearts towards men, towards people, towards others.  This is our love towards other people; it is patient, kind, and doesn’t envy or boast, those kinds of things.

In verse 6, when it comes to "Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth, it is kind of a summary statement, that anything and all things that are good, love rejoices at. Anything and all things that are bad, wrongdoing, iniquity, sin, that which is against God, love does not rejoice with that, which brought up an immediate question in my mind.  What sitcom on television could a loving Christian then watch?  I mean think it through just a little bit.  This is how singed our consciences have gotten.  Some of you watch the show, "House."  It's a newer show.  It's not a sitcom, I don't guess.  I haven't figured out this urge we have to be inside surgeries and medical rooms, and you know I think of the commercial, Dr. Marcus Welby, MD: "I'm not a doctor but I play one on TV"  whatever that meant for promoting the commercial he was promoting.  Have you ever listened to the lines in "House."  Every single line the lead character says is absolutely ridiculously sarcastic and mean.  Have you ever noted the attitude that television leads us into?  Commercials tells us we are the most important person in the world, the shows tells us to laugh at sex and God and things that are of the most deep importance in the world, and one preacher said, "Well once you laugh at something you can never take it seriously again."

You see how love should begin to pervade our lives because if we learn reactions to things from television and we watch sarcastic responses, we look at the athletes with their bodies trim and fit, who do supernatural, seemingly supernatural things and we exalt them to the heavens where they make umpteen million dollars for throwing a ball or shooting one through a hoop, and then we are looking hard for our role models.  Thank God for the two role models for the football coaches in the NFL this year who competed in the Super Bowl. 

What I'm thinking about is, if love rejoices with the truth, but does not rejoice at wrongdoing, how many things have we laughed at that are wrong?  And once we laugh at them we can't see them as wrong anymore.  So, that's a summary statement that the believer who loves, oh rejoices at truth.  The kind of truth that John wrote about when he rejoiced that his friend walked in truth.  It was a lifestyle of doing that which was right and good.  And Chapter 13 Verse 7 is not love toward men or else Paul would be repeating himself.  He says in Verse 4, love is patient, kind; love does not envy or boast towards humans.  But when he gets to verse 7, he says, "Love bears all things, holds up all things."

What I think he is talking about is the individual believer's lifestyle on this earth through the difficulties of Christian persecution or Christian suffering.  That when our faith is attacked, when things don't go rightly, our loves bears up and then it believes all things.  It is not that we are believing for the best in people; its that we are believing the promises of God because we love Him. And love then hopes all things.  We believe this God's promises, so we're are hoping for them to come to us.  Love endures all things, that means it outlasts.  In the heart of the Christian, nothing can conquer the love that God has put there.  We can fight through it.  That is a summary of what the chapter holds for us, or those verses. 

So, how in the world do you work something like that into your life?  How did we get so far from it?  This is one of the things that has undergirded my faith in the Word of God.  When I look at the world's situation and I look at how we are, and I think through the big picture of God, is there a God, has God spoken? All these things that demand answers in the hearts and minds of people, that people really do ask, at least thinking people who are serious about finding answers ask.  We should never be afraid to ask those questions because God has answers for them.  But, when I look at what he says about love, and then I look at the world I live in, it confirms something for me deeply that is radically true.  When God created Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, they were perfect.  They had within their soul this divine nature to love.  There was only the two of them but it perfectly took in one another.  It took in the care of the earth.  They were given the responsibility for that.  Their soul was expansive and large.  It was not self-focused and self-centered.  They had the capacity to love without hindrance, and wouldn't that be a wonderful thing to do?  But at the moment of disobedience to God, the soul of humanity, the soul of Adam and Eve shrunk.  It was like, as Edwards said, somebody poured on the human soul "a mighty astringent" that shrunk it down into the captivity of self-focus and our vast and expansive soul and vision of life that was able to reach out and draw in our fellow human being now shuts them out unless they can help me.  But, God entered on his work of redemption.  He sent his Son, and he tells us in the Book of Colossians that through Christ, through his death, burial and resurrection, through our faith in him by his grace, he is remaking us into the image of our creator.  His very nature is to love.  When I see a world full of hate, what that does for me is it doesn’t cause me problems, it actually strengthens my faith because then I see that the story God told in the beginning is the story of truth and that's how I can understand myself when I fall so short, and when I look to the gospel and see that there is a real remedy, it radically focuses me on God's remedy for my shrunken sinful soul. 

I'll ask a few questions and then begin the application.  When we read those words, "Love is patient and kind, love does not envy or boast, it is not arrogant or rude, it does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable  or resentful,"  what we are talking about, the word patient there, love is patient, years ago a Greek professor described it as being long-fused and it literally means there is a long, long, long time that you are putting up with the irritations from other people is actually the focus of this word, before you ever burst into the flame of passion.  Love is patient.  That is what we receive from others.  And then kind is the opposite of that word, it's what we do for other people.  That's what love is. Sometimes we are doing kindness towards those who have irritated our patience.  Love does not envy or boast.  That, too, is a two-sided thing.  The word, envy, teaches us that we would not look at someone else who is better than us in intellect, athletic ability or social status, and oppose what they have in relativity to what we have, and boasting would mean if we are the one on top of the social ladder, we would not look down and show off in a way as to make people envy us.

We got a new car a couple of weeks ago.  It's really hard not to roll down my window and say "Hey, you like my car?"  [laughter] It's the newest car I've ever bought in my life!  Haven't made the first payment yet, so I still like it! [laughter]

Love is patient and kind, love does not envy or boast, it is not arrogant or rude. 

You don’t judge others and you don't puff yourself up.  That's what the word rude means.  It doesn’t insist on its own way, it is not irritable.  That means you are not touchy.  It is not resentful.  That's when we look at others and judge them as to their state or their actions or their manners. 

Now, does that describe you?  Let me explain something.  I'm not asking that from the position of "Hey, that describes me and it ought to describe you, too."  When I come to this passage of scripture, I look at it and say, "God that's not a really good description of me, but I'd like to become that and I'd like for you to walk with me in that."  Because when I think of a church full of God's people living like that, I think of a people magnet.  I think of a light that shines on Jesus Christ because we are beginning to reflect his glory.

So, how does this become us?  How does this become you?  First of all you have to get extremely serious about the issue.  And you have to recognize that this is the Word of God and it is an actual description of what a Christian can be by the Holy Spirit, by the grace of God, he will empower you to be this.  So, I would say pray a bit before you go to this Word to look at it.  Because if you look at it rightly, it's that uncommon thing you are staring at, as if you have never seen it before that makes you want to back off, and yet a beauty so strong it draws you in and says "I want that" and then, to get real practical, I would go down the list of verses 4 through 8 and I would examine it one by one.  And, then I would pick out the one area, the one little area that you needed to act on, that you needed an attitude change about, that you need most to develop, what is it? Patience? How about irritability? A loving person is not easily irritated.  How about resentful?  Do you resent others?  How about insisting on your own way?  Do you just have to have it your way because you're right?  So, which one might be yours?  And then, you have to face a serious question, maybe the most serious of all….can you do that?  Is it possible? 

In the closing minutes I want to convince you that it is.  Let me explain to you how, because unless you are convinced, it is a hopeless case. Because when you look at yourself honestly and you say, "I'm going to be that" unless you are extremely egocentric, you're saying, "I can't be that."  But I want to tell you, you can.  Because first of all, you have to.  You have to understand what it means to be a Christian.  You have to understand that God literally entered this world in loving people who did not love him.  His Son was crucified, buried and was raised from the dead and gave his promise that if you will repent of your sins, put your faith in me, I will give you eternal life.  When he does that, he gives us his divine nature.  We are made partakers.  That does not mean we are made divine.  It doesn’t mean that at all.  It means we have his life in us and, therefore, we can then by his grace and power become the human we were meant to be.  We are to be Christlike in Christ's humanity, not his divinity or his deity.  We can't be like that.  We can be like him as a human and he was loving, he was perfect. So, how can I, how can you overcome one of the major, if not the major barriers to love this way, and what is that?  The fear of not being loved back.  The fear of being run over in this unloving world.  The fear of being vulnerable before other human beings will keep you from loving this way.  So, what's the key?  By knowing that you are loved perfectly.  When you know that you are loved perfectly, you will have the grace and the strength and the power to love other people. 

Now before I go on to explain that, don't you think that you would be a much happier person if you were a loving person?  You wouldn't be worried about keeping a record of wrongs.  You would take injuries from other people and let them go away.  I'm not saying they wouldn't hurt.  They do hurt;  they hurt terribly, but you have a place to take them in and a power and a capacity to do that because of the wounds of the Lord Jesus.  God says "Perfect love casts out fear," and that his perfect love for his children casts the fear out of our hearts. How do you know you're loved?  I've quoted this probably no telling how many times, because we can never get over it: "But God demonstrated his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."  Now, if he died for you, while you were a sinner, then later in Romans the writer says, "How will he, who did not spare his own son, but freely gave him up for us all, not along with him give us all things?"
 

If God loved you when you were unloving and unlovable, now that you have given your life to his son and he sees you in his son, he loves you like his only begotten because you are in him.  He is still not loving you because of your performance.  He is loving you out of his own grace.  And when you know that, that you are loved perfectly, sins, scars, warts and all, you are secure to love.