[PLAY VIDEO “LOVE IS EPISODE 2]
-it’s almost as good as Dr. Phil, isn’t it? It’s almost as long between commercials…
-for those of you who were not with us last week, we are taking the month of June to go through the Love Chapter. I Corinthians 13. The part of the Bible that people only read at weddings.
-but this chapter was not designed for weddings. It was not meant to be so specific as to apply to only people who are in love with each other. It is meant for all people to treat each other this way.
-last week we started with the first few verses and how they show how love is the language of God. That God is more concerned with your attitude when treating people than what you are actually doing. You can help someone and show absolutely no love, then it’s worthless. Or you can help someone with love and they’ll remember your love long after how you actually helped them.
-this week we continue looking at how this chapter tells us to love everyone.
**I Cor. 13:4-7 -> 4Love is very patient and kind, never jealous or envious, never boastful or proud, 5never haughty or selfish or rude. Love does not demand its own way. It is not irritable or touchy. It does not hold grudges and will hardly even notice when others do it wrong. 6It is never glad about injustice, but rejoices whenever truth wins out. 7If you love someone, you will be loyal to him no matter what the cost. You will always believe in him, always expect the best of him, and always stand your ground in defending him. (LB)
-to be honest, I really, really like it when I know there are people who will be loyal to me no matter what, that will always believe in me, expect the best of me, always defend me. It’s a great section.
-but what does it mean. I know there’s something that just jumps off the page to me that for some reason was not explained to me growing up.
1. LOVE IS AN ACTION
-don’t go calling my parents saying they should have taught me better. Not their fault on this one.
-but think about it. A majority of these words here are taught to us as feelings. I feel patient, or I don’t feel very patient right now. I feel jealous. I feel irritable.
-but in our context as people trying to show God’s love to others, do we feel patient, or do we act patiently? Even when we don’t feel like it?! Do we act kind? Aren’t these really actions that we choose to do?
-see, love isn’t just a feeling. I am in love so I feel in love. I choose to love someone, I choose to act in a way that is loving.
-and it’s not always an easy choice to make, but it’s still a choice.
-there’s an old story about Francis of Assisi. Apparently he was terrified of leprosy, to which I don’t blame him, I kind of agree. But he tells the story of one day he was traveling and on the path ahead of him was a leper. He says his first reaction was to run away, but instead he felt ashamed of himself, ran up to him, gave him a hug on the neck and kiss on the cheek and walked on. When he turned back a moment later, the leper was gone and as he tells the story he see it as a test of God, he believed that Christ was the leper testing his capability to love when he didn’t feel like it.
-sometimes we have to do that, love when we don’t feel like it, because love is an action, not a feeling. It is a choice we make.
**I Pe. 4:8 -> 8Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins. (NLT)
-continue to show love, continue to do loving acts, to live out love. And in that, sins are covered over. Because:
2. ACTIONS CHANGE ATTITUDES
-if you want how you feel about someone to change, change how you treat them.
-seeking counsel from psychologist Dr. George W. Crain, a woman confided that she hated her husband and intended to divorce him. "I want to hurt him all I can," she said. "In that case," said the doctor, "I advise you to start showering him with all the compliments you can. Then, when you have become indispensable to him - just when he thinks you love him devotedly - then start the divorce action. That’s the way to hurt him." Some months later the wife returned to report that she had followed the suggested course. "Good," said the doctor, "Now’s the time to file for divorce." "Divorce!" exclaimed the woman indignantly. "Never! I’ve fallen in love with him."
-smart man that Dr. Crain.
-but it’s true. We so often wait until we feel like we love someone, then we start treating them like it. What if we did it backwards? What if we started showing them love, the action part of love first?
-all the time we talk about that little section in James, how faith without works is dead. So what do we do? We work on faith. What if instead we simply started the works and maybe later the faith would come about on its own? What if when someone drives us nuts instead of waiting until we like them to treat them lovingly we simply start treating them right?
-there is a huge correlation between attitude and actions.
**Eph. 4:22-23 -> 22Throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. 23Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. (NLT)
-do you see it? To get rid of your old sinful nature, stop living your former way of life. And when your actions change, the Holy Spirit will renew your thoughts and attitudes.
-I know someone who just went through this. She said there were people in her church who just plain drove her nuts. And forever she would just get upset and frustrated. Then one day she decided to pray for them instead and wouldn’t you know it they didn’t change, but she did!
-if you’re wondering why you don’t have that kind of love that always puts others first, here’s an easy way to get it. Start putting others first. It won’t feel natural, it won’t be easy, but the more you do it, the easier it becomes and the more your whole perception changes.
-I think this is why all the commands boil down to love.
**Gal. 5:14 -> 14For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (NLT)
-to really love someone else, you have to love them like you love yourself. You have to put them ahead of what you want to do. It begs the question:
3. CAN YOU REALLY LOVE WITHOUT PUTTING YOURSELF LAST?
-is it really possible? Can you be showing love to others while thinking of yourself, building yourself up?
-I want us to go back and look at our opening verses. Work with through them with me.
Love is very patient when the guy at Wal-Mart steals your parking spot.
Love is kind when that one waiter at Noble Romans won’t refill your Coke no matter how many times you flag him down.
Love is never jealous when the guy down the hall gets the promotion that you know you deserve.
Love is not envious of Troy’s awesome Geo Prism.
-and so on and so forth. Look at them all. It is impossible to be putting yourself ahead of someone you love.
**Phil. 2:3 -> 3Don’t do anything from selfish ambition or from a cheap desire to boast, but be humble towards one another, always considering others better than yourselves. (GNT)
-and that is one of the hardest things to do. Really. We’d all like to give the nice little church answer that serving others is a piece of cake, but we all know the truth. Maybe you’ve just been doing it so long it’s easier, which is good for you. But for the rest of us, when it’s a church lock-in and it’s 7:45 in the morning and someone from Upwards accidentally opens the door and turns the lights on waking everyone up, love is not my gut first reaction.
-and remember from last week, attitude when it comes to showing love is everything. To simply put on the act and do your serving duty but not really love, it’s not what God wants. He wants us to be doing it in love too!
-Leonard Bernstein was once asked which instrument was the most difficult to play. He thought for a moment and then replied, "The second fiddle. I can get plenty of first violinists, but to find someone who can play the second fiddle with enthusiasm - that’s a problem. And if we have no second fiddle, we have no harmony."
-it’s true, if you want everything to work together, you need everyone to play their part. And only a servants heart, someone who loves you and/or what you do is going to do that.
-Lorie and I visited one church a little bit bigger than this one who had a team of people who worked behind the scenes, doing screens, sound, moving instruments off stage before the preaching, things like that. The pastor took a second to thank them when we were there because he said they have two goals. To do their best and to not be seen.
-to me, that’s love. Love of God, love of their ministry, whatever. We have too many first violinists like Bernstein said. It’s easy to love when you get something out of it. It’s easy to tell Grandma you love her when you know she has your birthday present in your hand. But to simply love. To allow yourself to be last and everyone else first. There’s:
4. NO GREATER LOVE THAN THIS
**Eph. 4:2 -> 2Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. (NLT)
-is there really any greater love than overlooking someone’s faults? Than literally putting yourself last for someone else?
-this is the kind of love that changes lives, that changes entire societies.
-last week I mentioned a writer named Lucien who told of the love Christians had for one another. He wasn’t the only one.
-the renowned Roman lawyer Marcus Minucius Felix, who lived in the second century, became a true Christian, and he testified of the early Christians: "They loved one another, even before knowing one another (personally)."
-there is nothing stronger than this kind of love. Nineteen hundred years ago when people were being killed for their faith, fed to lions, killed for sport, the rest of the world was taking notice on how they reacted to it. How they didn’t fight back.
-this is the kind of love that Jesus wants us to have for each other, it is the greatest love in the universe.
-if you are willing to put others before you, that is it. Jesus went so far as to give up His life for this love.
-the night before He died he said this to His disciples:
**John 15:9-13,17 -> 9”I loved you as the Father loved Me. Now remain in My love. 10I have obeyed My Father’s commands, and I remain in His love. In the same way, if you obey My commands, you will remain in My love. 11I have told you these things so that you can have the same joy I have and so that your joy will be the fullest possible joy. 12This is My command: Love each other as I have loved you. 13The greatest love a person can show is to die for his friends. 17This is My command: Love each other.” (NCV)
-the greatest love is to die for a friend.
-why? Because that’s a situation where you have to make a choice. Me or them. And love says what that choice should be.
-now luckily I have never had to make a choice that is physically life and death. But sometimes I have to die a little for someone else on the inside. I have to sacrifice for people, just like we all do. Go back to I Corinthians. You have to die a little inside to be patient. You have to die a little inside to be kind.
-and the higher the level of what’s being asked, the higher our level of love must be.
-I found this story and it’s a perfect example.
-Sir Ernest Shackleton was an explorer around the turn of the century specializing in the Arctic and Antarctica. He was actually even knighted for getting as close to the south pole as possible at the time. One time he was asked to tell of his most terrible moment in the Arctic. And he said his worst was one night in an emergency hut. He and his fellows were lying there; he rather apart from the rest. They had given out the ration of the last biscuits. There was nothing more to divide. Every man thought the other was asleep. He sensed a stealthy movement and saw one of the men turning to see how the others were faring. He made up his mind that all were asleep and then stretched over the next man and took his biscuit bag and removed the biscuit. Shackleton lived through an eternity of suspense. He would have trusted his life in the hands of that man. Was he turning out a thief under terribly tragic circumstances? Stealing a man’s last biscuit! Then Shackleton sensed another movement. He saw the man open his own box, take the biscuit out of his own bag and put it in his comrade’s, and return the man’s biscuit and stealthily put the bag back at the man’s side. Shackleton said, “I dare not tell you that man’s name. I felt that act was a secret between himself and God.” (Encyclopedia of 770 Illustrations, from Life of Faith).
-that is real love. That is putting your life on the line for a friend. That is the kind of love that Christ asks us to live out every day.
-I don’t know where you are with God right now, but if you want to have this kind of love, there is a really easy way. Get to know Him more. You become like whoever you spend the most time with, and God is love. If you want to be someone who can give up your life for their friends, to have that real love, spend time with the one who is the source of that real love.
-so as we close today, spend some time talking to God and looking at yourself. Is the love that you have inside of you really an action, is it something that other people can see and touch and recognize? Is it strong enough to put others first and yourself last?
