The Cornerstone Series

[PLAY VIDEO “LOVE IS EPISODE 4]

-and thus concludes the Dr. Aaron show. I know, I know, you’re all going to miss him. I’m sure we can put him on Youtube or something.

-anyway, this is it, our final week in I Corinthians 13, the love chapter.

-a quick recap, we started out talking about how love was the unspoken language of God, how God literally speaks through love. Likewise, the way we tell others about God best is also through love.

-which led into the next week in which we talked about how love is putting others first. That you can’t really love someone while thinking of yourself, you need to put them first.

-then last week we talked about how love is the way to know God. If you want to find out more about God, you need to find out what love is. After all, if God is love, knowing love tells us about God. We looked at how God has spoken to us in love throughout history and how for us to learn what love is we need to be loving others.

-this week we finish the chapter looking at how love is the cornerstone.

**I Cor. 13:11-13 -> 11It’s like this: when I was a child I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child does. But when I became a man my thoughts grew far beyond those of my childhood, and now I have put away the childish things. 12In the same way, we can see and understand only a little about God now, as if we were peering at His reflection in a poor mirror; but someday we are going to see Him in His completeness, face-to-face. Now all that I know is hazy and blurred, but then I will see everything clearly, just as clearly as God sees into my heart right now. 13There are three things that remain—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love. (LB)

-that’s going to be great, to understand God in all His completeness.

-I think that’s one of the reasons why:

1. LOVE IS THE FOUNDATION

-at the end of our passage Paul mentions how love is the greatest. Love is the foundation of all.

-when we were thinking of the names for the sermons in this series, the idea of a cornerstone seemed to make sense.

-when it comes to buildings, the cornerstone was the stone laid first. It is called the cornerstone because it was usually laid at the northwest corner and the rest of the building was shaped around that marker.

-it had such significance that thousands of years ago when someone built a building, they would lay the cornerstone then offer sacrifices to it praying that the building would be strong. They would give grains or oils and place them under the cornerstone. Some cultures went so far as to sacrifice animals or even people and lay their body under the cornerstone.

-it was more than simply an important rock like it is today, you put a date on it or someone important places it, this was the future of the building, both physically and spiritually.

-and this is who Jesus is to our faith as King David wrote long before He was born.

**Ps. 118:22 -> 22The stone that the builders rejected has now become the cornerstone. (NLT)

-He is our cornerstone, and He is love. So likewise, to know Him and be like Him, we need to make love our cornerstone, our point where our lives are aligned.

**Eph. 3:17-18 -> 17And I pray that Christ will make His home in your hearts through faith. I pray that you may have your roots and foundation in love, 18so that you, together with all God’s people, may have the power to understand how broad and long, how high and deep, is Christ’s love. (GNT)

-Christ’s love is our foundation. It’s needs to be at the core of all we do, all we are.

-Adolphe Monod, the famous French evangelical preacher, who died in 1856, said before dying: “I have strength for nothing more than to think about the love of God; He has loved us—that is the whole of dogmatic; let us love Him—that is the sum total of the ethics of the Gospel.”

-he’s right! That two way street of love, God loving us and us loving Him, needs to be core. But the amazing part about God is then there’s a third branch and we need to love others too.

-in our Christian faith, I don’t think the problem that people see with us is that we don’t love. I think it’s just not an adult love.

2. WE NEED ADULT LOVE

-everyone here, I hope, has in some way grown up and deals with things differently then when you were a kid. Guys, I hope you don’t tell your wife you love her by pulling her hair and running away. I hope when you have an argument at work it’s not resolved by “I know you are but what am I” [MAKE FACE]