INTRO: Small children were asked, “What is love?” One little girl answered, “Love is when your mommy reads you a bedtime story. True love is when she doesn’t skip any pages.”
Last week was Valentines Day. I felt the Lord put on my heart to speak on love.
TITLE: What is Love
TEXT: I Cor. 13:1-8
I. Necessity of love
II. Characteristics of love
III. Lack of love
I. The necessity of love
A. Speech - (v. 1) - Words that are meant to express the greatest possible climax. (Speech that our ears love to drink). Captivate us, grab our attention.
1. Oratory skills - speakers that move us to laughter, to tears in the same sentence (kind of like me).
2. Quality of voice - sends chills up your spines (Mom - Ricardo Montlebon).
*Paul speaking on languages of not only men but of angels (even spiritual beings).
3. Problem at Corinth - Putting to high a priority on speaking in tongues (instructions on the gifts in this letter). Paul is showing them what they should really focus on.
Key: What does it matter if you have the smoothest speech (greatest orator), if you do not have love. It does not mean anything!
ex Unfaithful husband bringing home 12 red roses for his wife compared to a young child running out and picking some dandelions (mud) running in to Mom and saying, “I love you.”
-What is worth more.
4. Resounding gong and a clanging symbol (Pastor Mark singing). Announce.
-Tongues (speech) without love is offensive, obtrusive. Does not mean anything! (Like scratching a chalkboard).
B. Knowledge (v. 1) - Have the prophecy of God and can understand the secrets of God. Intellect is beyond everyone. No one is your equal.
1. Science tells us that the only reason we are greater than the animal world is because of our minds.
-Imagine having a mind: No studying (you know it all).
At work people come to hear you just talk.
Church teach without anything (You know the mind of God).
Key: It does not matter if you can understand all mysteries and have all the knowledge of God, if you have not love.
Ex. Balaam
-Knew and worked in the spiritual realm. Soothsayer (someone who practiced divination, witchcraft, sorcery) in an attempt to gain wisdom and knowledge.
-Also a prophet (meant used by God).
-Balak, King of the Moabites, sees this mass horde of people (Israelites). Heard what their God had done to the Egyptians. So he was going to get someone who knew the spiritual realm to put a curse on them so his people would be safe.
-First couple of oracles he used witchcraft, but third oracle turned to God. Balaam never did curse the Israelites because God told him not to.
Point: Balaam knew the spiritual realm and how to reach it (by witchcraft/God). It did him no good because he gets killed by Moses and his army. (His vast knowledge did him no good.) Balaam is used as a negative example in scripture.
Matt. 7:21 - “Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven. Many will say to me on that day, “Lord, Lord did we not prophesy in your name, drive out demons and perform many miracles.” Then I will tell you plainly “I never knew you. Away from me you evil doer!”
C. Faith - Able to do great things (miracles, healings, move mountains) because you have great faith.
Paul is not talking saving faith, but faith that does incredible things (power).
-By faith Abel offered a better sacrifice.
-By faith Enoch was taken from this life.
-By faith Abraham left home and went to the Promised Land.
-By faith Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt.
-By faith the walls of Jericho fell.
Hebrews 11:32-35 (READ) Great people of faith.
Point: It does not matter if you have faith that can move mountains if you have not love.
D. Sacrifice (v. 3) - Able to give everything, all, even your own body. (Shows us the degree of giving). People will give but not to the degree of destroying oneself.
1. Love and sacrifice are so closely related that we do not usually contrast them.
-Paul is doing that in this passage!
ex. Glades (Parents friend) try to buy way to heaven.
Ross Peroe (Love America, Power was real reason).
It’s not what we give but the attitude of the heart when we give!
2. Ultimate sacrifice - own bodies (lives without love).
ex Christian on his way to be martyred. Refused to forgive and be reconciled with his Christian
brother.
-Girl suicide bomber into the Marine barracks, killing herself and several hundred marines.
I John 4:20 - “If anyone says I love God, yet hates his brother, he is a liar!!!
Key: It does not mailer if you give everything to the poor and even give up your life in the cause. If you do not have love, it does not matter!
E. Gain nothing - benefit none, count for nothing.
-Speech that sways the masses.
-Knowledge that only God knows.
-Faith that will take you through any situation (great miracles).
-Sacrifice that no one can match.
*Paul is saying if it were possible to have these things, it would not count for anything if you do not have love!
II. Characteristics of Love (4-7 READ)
A. Characteristics of love are described both positive and negative.
1. 7 Positive Patient - endure, slow to become resentful
Kind Trust
Rejoice with the truth Hopes
Protects Perseveres
2. 8 Negative Does not envy Is not self-seeking
Does not boast Is not easily angered
Is not proud Keeps no record of wrongs
Is not rude(behave Does not delight in evil
disgracefully)
B. Focus on v.7
1. Always - at all times, without exception.
a. Always protects KJV – beareth, GK – a covering to keep off something which threatens.
ex. my example of protection from bully on the bus.
(bully, fear riding bus, call to big brother, freedom to move around).
1. God protects us from the bully (Satan).
-Fearful of things in our lives/try to stand strong (beating).
-Call on God (take off the bully).
-Freedom to enjoy life.
God loves us more than we can even imagine!
2 Cor. 1:22 - “He anointed us, set His seal of ownership on us. Put His Spirit in our hearts as a
deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.”
b. Always trust - KJV (believeth) GK (Used in an ethical sense).
-My interpretation (love is always thinking good of someone or something).
1. A little boy asked his father what love is?
-Father explained, the other day saw children throwing rocks and sticks at their dog and today the dog came waging his tail and licking their faces (dog still loved the children).
2. God trusts us.
-We do wrong (throw rocks and sticks at God) and He still believes in us.
-Some here today need to think better of themselves (need to look at yourselves through God’s eyes. He thought you were special enough to send His own Son to die for you).
c. Always hopes - GK (wait with joy and full of confidence).
1. Lady in the city worked with down-and-out people.
-Tremendous love flowed from this lady.
-Encouragement she gave.
Proverbs says a man without hope will die!
-Worked with self-destructive alcoholic man (detox many times).
-Cried with this man, showed him tremendous love (committed suicide).
2. God has hope for us.
-God is always encouraging us!
d. Always perseveres - KJV (endureth) GK (to endure calmly, absolute ill treatment).
ex Dan, the heroin addict (10 years). Wife endured all this pain (addiction, unfaithfulness, broken
promises, stealing) over the years.
Natural mind: You’re crazy. I thought - Ah, she is just afraid to leave because she can’t get anyone else! (she was stunning). Lord showed me that’s what love is. It perseveres!
1. God’s love perseveres.
-Angry with someone like Dan for abusing his wife like that.
a. We are doing the same thing to God as Dan did to his wife.
-Using the Lord’s name in vain.
-Not loving our family members (spiritual, natural).
-Gossiping/bitter feelings toward someone.
-Not going to church/our time is more important than Gods!
Romans 10:2 1 - “all day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.”
-Lord was speaking about the children of Israel and how hard-hearted they were.
*My prayer - Lord please forgive me if I have done the same!
e. Love never fails (READ v. 8)
1. Love is permanent.
a. Love used here in I Cor. 13 KJV (charity).
GK “agape” God’s love (Can’t have this without the power of God).
*This love never fails.
2. All other things will pass away, but not love.
What would it be like in America without love?
III. Lack of Love
A. World - read articles.
Alzheimer’s Patient left at Dog track
Post Falls, Idaho (AP) – He was dressed in a sweatsuit, bedroom slippers and a baseball cap with the slogan “Proud to be American”. But authorities had few other clues Monday about an elderly Alzheimer’s patient who was abandoned at a greyhound racetrack, left sitting in a wheelchair with a brief note and a bag of diapers. “We keep running into dead end after dead end,” police Lt. Mike Anderson said of attempts to find the man’s relatives. “It’s kind of got a lot of people up in arms here. People can’t believe someone would treat someone else like that.” All labels had been cut from the man’s clothing and all identifying marks had been removed from the chair, Police Detective Harlen Fritsche said. A small, typewritten note, pinned to the wheelchair, identified the man as “John King” and said he suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. Authorities said it was possible the name was false. Criminal charges of abandonment could be filed if relatives are found, Fritsche said.
Woman charged with Murder in girl’s death
Helms told investigators she forced a plum-sized wad of tissue paper into the child’s throat to stop her from crying. Helms said she held the tissue in her daughter’s throat while the child struggled and tried to spit it out – went to bed and called the police the next morning. Helms told investigators she sometimes placed a sock in the child’s throat to keep her quiet, but the child was always able to spit it out.
Man lay dead for hours in Boston’s center
When Joseph Bulens lay on the concrete next to City Hall, no one checked to see if he was breathing or felt for a pulse – not the commuters who passed or the man who read a newspaper on a nearby bench. He lay there dead for hours – in busy City Hall Plaza, in the heart of downtown.
First entry in diary: ‘I killed my little sister’
That’s part of the sole diary entry of a 14-year old Fremont girl accused of using a pillow to smother her 4-year old sister who died under mysterious circumstances. “Dear Diary: Well, it’s the New Year so I’m going to start telling you everything dearest to me. I have to get something off my back. I killed my little sister. I went into her room and got her and took her into my room and told her I loved her and covered her mouth and suffocated her.”
What led teens to torture, murder?
The teen-age girls in rumpled jeans got out and opened the trunk. Inside, Shanda Renee Sharer - bludgeoned with a tire tool and tortured for hours – lay shivering against the bitter cold, wearing only her underpants. Nearly nine hours earlier, the 12-year-old-girl had been lured into the car, where an adversary who for months had wished her dead was hiding. Melinda Loveless, then 16, suspected Shanda had stolen her lesbian lover. During the pre-dawn hour the young girl was repeatedly beaten unconscious, investigators say. She was choken with a cord, and her legs were sliced with a knife. An old blanket she had clutched in the trunk was draped over her and soaked with gasoline from a large plastic pop bottle. She was burned alive. The next morning, the four agreed over breakfast that if they remained silent no one could link them to the killing.
1. Hatred, jealousy, lust, revenge, evil is at war with love. (Things of this world are waring against the
things of God).
-Christians today are supposed to be impacting the world not the world impacting the Christians.
-Meaning things of this world (hatred, jealousy, lust, revenge, etc.) are pouring into our lives because we’re allowing it, and it’s hurting our walk with God.
rather
-The love of God should be flowing from us to the point where it’s effecting our surroundings.
John 13:35 - “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
-I believe Christians are partly to blame for the downward spiral of American morality because we have not shown the love we are supposed to!
IN CONCLUSION: Story of Lenin (started communist revolution in Russia).
-He was so wrapped up in his revolutionary ideas that one night as he sat there writing his wife was at her dying mother’s bedside, doing everything to comfort her, getting up exhausted, said to her husband to wake her if her mother needed her.
-Lenin agreed. The next morning she awoke to find her mother dead and Lenin still writing at his table. She confronted him and questioned - why did you not awaken me?
-Lenin replied, “You told me to wake you if she needed anything. She did not. She just died!”
Thought: The world will not care what we know until they know we care!
Close with - “Know We Are Christians By Our Love”
