OPEN: Amazon.com is a site on the internet that sells thousands of books (more than you can find in any bookstore). One of the advantages of this site is that you can look up books by “topic”. So, someone did just that. They searched for certain topics and were intrigued by what they found. For example, they sought how many books were on Amazon that dealt with
• Heaven, and they found 2,652 book titles
• Money had 10,304 listings
• There were 16,765 for “Sex,”
• 18,818 for “God,”
• BUT there were 30,066 for “Love.”
ILLUS: One preacher said he looked up the definition of love in his Compton’s encyclopedia, and he found that there was not one single article on love. It only referred him to emotions and sex. So, he looked up the word "emotion" in his encyclopedia and - in the entire three-page article, love was only mentioned in one sentence.
Then he looked up the word "sex." And under the subject of sex, he found 12 different articles. AND in those 12 different articles, he found the word "love" in only one paragraph.
After having done this research, he thought to himself: “That is so true, Americans know a whole lot more about sex than they do about love. The so-called love songs on the radio are not love songs. They are lust songs.” (Jim Mooney)
(PAUSE…)
Now, I don’t know if that’s ABSOLUTELY true but I do know that a lot of people are confused about what love is really all about. Even back in the church at Corinth there were people who were confused about it.
The Corinthian congregation was filled with people who had become Christians because they had responded to the idea that God actually loved them and sent His only begotten Son.
As the Apostle John wrote:
“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” 1John 4:10
So these Christians at Corinth knew what love was - because God had loved them first. But, after they’d been Christians for awhile… they’d forgotten what love was all about. And so, Paul dedicated an entire section of letter to them to describe what love meant to God:
I Corinthians 13.
This chapter is so poetic and eloquent and precise that it’s one of the best known sections of the Bible. And it’s become so popular that it’s often used in wedding ceremonies. One of the reasons so many people love this chapter is because it does such a powerful job of answering the question: what is love?
Seemingly everyone who’s ever read these words agrees:
YES… THAT IS WHAT LOVE IS ALL ABOUT!
One person even went so far as to say:
"I Corinthians 13… is a portrait for which Christ Himself has sat.” C. H. Dodd
So… what IS love?
Well, Paul tells us:
"Love is patient and love is kind" (vs. 4)
"It rejoices with the truth." (vs. 6)
"It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." (vs. 7)
Now I Corinthians 13 tells us love a great deal more about love, but these phrases I just quoted focus on what love IS (we’ll focus on what this chapter says love is “not” next week).
So we’ll let’s being with that first phrase:
"Love is patient and love is kind."
What I found interesting was the order of these two words. Paul could have said Love is KIND… and… PATIENT, but that’s not the way the Spirit led him to write it down.
Love is FIRST patient… then it’s kind.
Patience comes first.
The KJV doesn’t use the word "patient" here. Instead it uses the phrase: "suffers long”.
The Greek word in this passage is actually a compound word made up of two different terms that literally translated says: “long” and “wrath” (or “anger”).
Now if I didn’t know any better I might think that a person who loved the way they should would be a person who would be angry for a long period of time. But that’s not what it means. The Greek word is intended to imply that it takes a LOT to make this person angry. You have to drag them a LOOOOONG way down the road before they get mad. They suffer a lot before they ever blow up.
Now, if you love someone, there’s going to be a time or two when they’re going to make you upset. Isn’t that true? (I gave the audience a moment to respond). Now don’t go looking at the person next to you, but you know it’s true. In fact, it’s often the people you care about who can make you upset the most. They know where your hot buttons are.
But when people annoy us… when they irritate us enough… we’re tempted to get more than just a little upset. On occasion our temptation will be to get really mad at them.
But God says the mark of true love is to not let that happen. The mark of true love is to be patient when this person might irritate you. The mark of true love is long suffering.
As Peter wrote: “love covers over a multitude of sins.” 1 Peter 4:8
Or another way of putting it is:
“Love covers a multitude of irritations”
“Love covers a multitude of annoyances.”
Love overlooks many things that would otherwise make us behave badly.
And that’s what you expect from Christians… because that’s what you expect from God.
ILLUS: The story’s told of an actor who was playing the part of Jesus in a passion play. As he was carrying his cross up the hill a heckler in the crowd made fun of him and said terrible things to him. The actor threw down the cross, walked over… and decked the guy.
The director took him aside and told him “I know he was a pest, but I can’t condone what you did. Besides, you’re playing the part of Jesus, & Jesus never retaliated. So don’t do anything like that again."
Well, the man promised he wouldn’t. But the next day the heckler was back worse than before, & finally the actor exploded and punched him out again.
This time the director said "That’s it. I have to fire you. We just can’t have you behaving this way while playing the part of Jesus."
The actor begged, "Please give me one more chance. I really need this job, and I can handle it if it happens again." So the director decided to give him another chance.
The next day he was carrying his cross up the street. Sure enough, the heckler was there again. You could tell that the actor was really trying to control himself, but it was about to get the best of him. He was clinching his fists and grinding his teeth.
Finally, he looked at the heckler and said, (pause) "I’ll meet you after the resurrection!"
Now that strikes us as funny because we know that actor wasn’t being Christ-like. We know that actor wasn’t being “long suffering” like Jesus would have been. We know that actor wasn’t showing love.
True love covers a multitude of sins.
It looks the other way a lot of times when it might get angry
True love “suffers long”.
But love that just suffers long (when we’re irritated) isn’t really Godly love.
Too often “long suffering” is just that. It’s quietly enduring something that can drive us to distraction. It’s simply allowing our emotions to go through a slow burn.
But Godly love is long suffering… AND it’s kind.
Godly love doesn’t just sit back and suffer… it does something about it.
Godly love reaches across to the person who’s offending you and says “I care for you.”
ILLUS: Paul Harvey once told the story of man named Coleman whose car was damaged by a woman who had passed him too closely on the highway and sideswiped his car.
When they’d pulled over to the side of the road to wait for the police, the woman broke into tears. It was her fault, she admitted. BUT it was a new car – less than 2 days from the showroom. ???How was she ever going to face her husband?
Mr. Coleman was sympathetic but explained they had to exchange information about their license numbers and automobile registrations.
She reached into the glove compartment to retrieve the documents in an envelope… and on the first paper to tumble out, in a heavy masculine scrawl were these words:
“In case of accident, remember, Honey, it’s you I love, not the car.”
Now, that note tells me two things:
1. This husband knew his wife wasn’t a good driver.
2. He loved her so much that when the inevitable accident occurred he wanted her to know that it was her she loved… not the car.
He wasn’t just willing to suffer long with her poor driving skills. He placed a note in her car that said she mattered to him – even if she damaged their car.
Paul was telling the Corinthian Christians… this is how God loves you.
He is loooong suffering when you fail.
But He shows you kindness when He forgives you
And so… you need to learn how to love each other that same way.
That kind of love can change people’s lives
ILLUS: Clark Cothern tells of chaperoning 30 teenagers in an all-night "lock-in" at church.
Early in the evening he was playing a game of table tennis in the fellowship hall. The game quickly grew into a heated competition, as a small crowd gathered to watch them battle it out.
“With the score tied and only three points to go before the end of the game, Tracy, a {14-year-old} eighth-grader, grabbed the ball and tried to play keep-away. My first impulse was irritation. But then a Scripture passage that our group had read that afternoon came streaking across my mind: "Love is patient, love is kind, and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked" (1 Corinthians 13:4-5).
“I politely asked Tracy to return the ball, and then the other player and I joked with her until she finally tossed the ball back onto the table. We thanked her and finished the game.”
Hours later, after an evangelistic film, here came Tracy down the aisle with a group of 6 others to accept Jesus as their Savior. Later that night, when we gathered for testimonies, Tracy told her story: "I grew up in a family where nobody goes to church. I’ve learned to get attention by making people mad at me. But earlier this evening I saw something different."
“When I stole the ball from those guys," Tracy said, pointing to us, "they didn’t get mad at me. They didn’t fight back. I saw something different in those guys, and I decided right then that I wanted whatever it was they have."
The 2nd phrase in I Corinthians 13 that tells us what love is tells us that Love “… rejoices with the truth”
ILLUS: A few years ago psychologist at University of Massachusetts named Robert Feldman ran an experiment to see how often people lied. He videotaped 121 pairs of students who’d just met. After a ten-minute conversation, each student was shown his or her tape and asked to point out any misrepresentations.
When they were interviewed after those conversations most of the students were quite sure they had spoken truthfully. But, when forced to review the videotape, fully 60 % realized they had lied at least once. On average, most had lied 2 or 3 times in the 10-minute exchange with a stranger.
Apparently people lying is more common than I’d like to think it is. That’s why in Ephesians 4:25 Paul advises the Christians there that: “each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body.”
In other words – Paul knew that people DO lie, even those in Ephesus.
Now, people lie for any number of reasons.
• Sometimes they lie because they’re dishonest.
• Sometimes they lie because they’re afraid.
• In this experiment, the men lied to impress the person they talked to. And the women lied to soften any negative opinion others would have of them.
In other words in that experiment – people lied because they wanted the other person to like them.
But people will also lie because they don’t care if that other person likes them. They lie because they don’t respect or like the person they’re lying to. And their lying shows that they don’t care about that person.
And God says: when you learn how to love the way you should… you’ll prefer truth to lying. You’ll put off falsehood and speak truthfully to each other.
But the truth we speak must be seasoned with love because truth without any love behind it is poisonous and destructive. Thus Ephesians 4:15 says we should be “speaking the truth in love.”
What God is telling the Corinthians is this:
I love you so much that I tell you the truth. You were a sinner and you were going to hell. BUT I loved you too much to let that happen, so when you believed/repented/confessed Jesus/baptized I forgave you. And I forgave you so that we could spend time together.
So in I Corinthians 13, Paul now says we need to love your fellow Christians in that same way. We need to tell them the truth. But we need to tell that truth in love, because we want to forgive them. And you want to forgiven them – because you want to spend time with them.
Lastly - in I Corinthians 13 - Paul tells us that love has certain characteristics that are ALWAYS true. Love “…always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” 1 Corinthians 13:7
In short… love never gives up.
Love ALWAYS does these things.
Love never quits, love never stops.
Love sees the disfiguring nature of sin in the lives of others and it keeps coming at you.
Love always protects:
It tells the one it loves, no one gets to you without coming thru me 1st
I love my kids. And that means - you want to hurt them – you’ll have to deal with me first.
Love always trusts and it always hopes:
If I love you, my tendency is to believe in you.
But now, didn’t we just get done saying that people lie???
Yes, but this trust thing goes deeper than whether a person lies to you or not.
You may have lied to me, or hurt me, or failed to do something you promised to do.
BUT If I love you I’m still believe in you.
I’ll still believe you are capable of being something better than what you are now.
Because that’s how God views me.
Love always perseveres: Love never gives up
As long as there is a chance to help that person we love become what we know they can be, we’re never going to stop.
That’s what true love looks like, because that’s the kind of love God has for us. He never gives up on us. “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9
Love never gives in.
Love never stops.
Love sees the disfiguring nature of sin in our lives – but it doesn’t matter - because love does NOT see others as they are… it sees them as they can be
CLOSE: In his book "Mortal Lessons" Richard Selzer (a surgeon wrote about the following event:
I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. The surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh; I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had cut the little nerve.
Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily? The young woman speaks.
"Will my mouth always be like this?" she asks.
"Yes," I say, "it will. It is because the nerve was cut."
She nods, and is silent. But the young man smiles.
"I like it," he says. "It is kind of cute."
All at once I know who he is. I understand, and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a god. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works.
That’s how God love us.
He sees our disfigured lives and loves us anyway.
And that’s how we ought to love each other.
But it’s hard to love in that way until you first know the love that God has for you. That’s why we offer an invitation at the end of every service…
