Unmistakable rythem of love.
I don’t think this is the only time we will explore this theme of love.
Today I want to explore with you 1 corinthians chapter 13.
1 Corinthians 13 New International Version (NIV)
13 If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
The greatest attribute that we can ever have is love.
Psalm *0 verse 7 says Restore us, God Almighty; make your face shine on us, that we may be saved.
Paul wrote 1st Corinthians – He was an educated man very educated.
Intelligent – his background in education is extraordinary.
Just for a moment lets just ratchet in the lens on Pauls educational background.
Paul was educated by his mother until the age of five. From age five to ten he studied with his father in the Hebrew scriptures and traditional writings. At the same time, being a Roman citizen and living in a Greek and Roman environment, he received a thorough education in the Greek language, history, and culture.
He was sent to Jerusalem at about the age of ten to attend the rabbinical school of Gamaliel, who was the son of Simeon the son of Hillel. Gamaliel was a most eminent rabbi who was mentioned both in the Talmud and in the New Testament (Acts 5:24-40; 22:3). Gamaliel was called Rabban - one of only seven teachers so called. He was a Pharisee, but he rose above party prejudice. He composed a prayer against the Christian "heretics". He lived and died a Jew.
The religious school of Gamaliel (Hillel) was chiefly oral and usually had a prejudice against any book but Scripture. They used a system of Scriptural exegesis, and Josephus in his writings expressed the wish to have such a power of exegesis. When school was in session, learned men met and discussed scriptures, gave various interpretations, suggested illustrations, and quoted precedents. The students were encouraged to question, doubt, even contradict.
When Paul became a Christian, his very thorough education was enormously helpful. He was able to assimilate Christian doctrines rapidly and relate them accurately to the Scripture teaching he had received. From his education, both from Gamaliel and in the desert from the Lord Jesus Christ, Paul developed a divine viewpoint attitude toward human history.
Paul knew that the existence of God can easily be perceived by anyone, that man can become aware of God, but that many men's deliberate sin halted this good beginning by immoral activities which accompanied their idolatry. Therefore, Paul had an intense hatred of idolatry of any kind.
Paul's teaching shows that the only reality is God. Idolatry distorts man's conception of the world and external nature. Idolatry is the enemy of mankind.
Paul knew the law of growth of human nature. As a Roman, Tarsian, Hebrew, and culturally Greek, he knew of the many distortions of the life of his society. As a nation becomes unhealthy, development is halted. Societies errors as to the nature of God and the true relation of God to man prevented nations from getting rid of their besetting evil.
The apostle Paul was one of the most famous citizens of the Roman Empire and without question one of the most influential individuals in history. He was used by the Lord in his missionary and evangelistic activities to set in motion a great deal of the organization known as the Christian Church, the Body of Christ on earth, to the extent that billions of human beings have been directly or indirectly affected by his ministry. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he wrote the foundation documents for the Christian way of life, the Word of God which has changed the lives of millions.
Paul is a highly educated man his definitions of God and his ways in the New Testament are extraordinary but when he whittles it all down he says Meanwhile these three remain Faith hope and love and the greatest of these is love
Restore us, God Almighty; make your face shine on us, that we may be saved.
Well if love is so great what is it like.
Well I think love is like God.
1 John 4:8
(New International Version)
Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
So to love, really love is to be a lot like God. Almost unable to live.
Real love pure love must then be beautiful really beautiful – it was said of Moses that when he met with God on the mountain that God’s face shone in fact whenever people thought that they saw God face to face in the bible that they would die because of the beauty and Holyness of God.
It kind of puts life into perspective doesn’t it when you think that when you look love in the face then you are looking into something so beautiful so pure so good that you are overwhelmed.
In Isaiah chapter 6 we find the prophet Isaiah looking love in the face.
Isaiah 6 New International Version (NIV)
Isaiah’s Commission
6 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”
4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.
5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.”
6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”
8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
When Isaiah looks at God in the face he looks into the source and the very essence of love.
Overwhelmed by the holiness of God and the beauty of his love Isaiah cries out Woe is me I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty!
When you look love in the face you discover Lack in your own life.
No one is perfect as they say but it is this very lack of perfection and total goodness that makes our love less than it should be.
If we want to love really love as god wants us to love then the first point of engagement is not at the abundance the presence of what we call love but at the very point where we lac k love.
What does Isaiah do? Well actually not much but we have this incredible scene where one of the seraphim flew to Isaiah with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched Isaiah’s mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”
Is this not a picture and indeed a prophetic prediction of the forgiveness of sins through Christ?
Matthew Henry comments This awful vision of the Divine Majesty overwhelmed the prophet with a sense of his own vileness. We are undone if there is not a Mediator between us and this holy God. A glimpse of heavenly glory is enough to convince us that all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. Nor is there a man that would dare to speak to the Lord, if he saw the justice, holiness, and majesty of God, without discerning his glorious mercy and grace in Jesus Christ. The live coal may denote the assurance given to the prophet, of pardon, and acceptance in his work, through the atonement of Christ. Nothing is powerful to cleanse and comfort the soul, but what is taken from Christ's satisfaction and intercession. The taking away sin is necessary to our speaking with confidence and comfort, either to God in prayer, or from God in preaching; and those shall have their sin taken away who complain of it as a burden, and see themselves in danger of being undone by it. It is great comfort to those whom God sends, that they go for God, and may therefore speak in his name, assured that he will bear them out.
If God is love then if we are to grow in love we must come to God but we find a dilemma that if we do go to God we feel tainted by sin when faced with this complete seemless love that only God can offer.
But this love of God stretches towards us with a passion and furiousness that provides for the whole envelope of lack we have and Jesus simply dies in our place
To bridge the gap where our inadequacy and God’s adequacy meets.
In John chapter 3 and verse 16 we hear Jesus tell Nicodemus you must be born again –that second birth that bridgeing of the gap between us and God is the ultimate act of love where we read in that Chapter verse 16 For God so loved.
This act of love from God when he is faced with our lack calls for
Our response. Acceptance we need to accept God’s love. As it says in romans for as
John 1:12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who ...
But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God
Our response is vital if we are to personify or display the love of God.
There is no other plan God has other than for us to own his love.
The alternative is unthinkable.
General William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, once told his students, "If I had my choice, I wouldn’t send you to school, I’d send you to Hell for five minutes, and you’d come back real soul winners."
You see love has to work first for the Christian in the area where there is lack.
The Hitchhiker
Roger Simms, hitchhiking his way home, would never forget the date—May 7. His heavy suitcase made Roger tired. He was anxious to take off his army uniform once and for all. Flashing the hitchhiking sigh to the oncoming car, he lost hope when he saw it was a black, sleek, new Cadillac. To his surprise the car stopped. The passenger door opened. He ran toward the car, tossed his suitcase in the back, and thanked the handsome, well-dressed man as he slid into the front seat. “Going home for keeps?” “Sure am,” Roger responded. “Well, you’re in luck if you’re going to Chicago.” “Not quite that far. Do you live in Chicago?” “I have a business there. My name is Hanover.” After talking about many things, Roger, a Christian, felt a compulsion to witness to this fiftyish, apparently successful businessman about Christ. But he kept putting it off, till he realized he was just thirty minutes from his home. It was now or never. So, Roger cleared his throat, “Mr. Hanover, I would like to talk to you about something very important.” He then proceeded to explain the way of salvation, ultimately asking Mr. Hanover if he would like to receive Christ as his Savior. To Roger’s astonishment the Cadillac pulled over to the side of the road. Roger thought he was going to be ejected from the car. But the businessman bowed his head and received Christ, then thanked Roger. “This is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.” Five years went by, Roger married, had a two-year-old boy, and a business of his own. Packing his suitcase for a business trip to Chicago, he found the small, white business card Hanover had given him five years before. In Chicago he looked up Hanover Enterprises. A receptionist told him it was impossible to see Mr. Hanover, but he could see Mrs. Hanover. A little confused as to what was going on, he was ushered into a lovely office and found himself facing a keen-eyed woman in her fifties. She extended her hand. “You knew my husband?” Roger told how her husband had given him a ride when hitchhiking home after the war. “Can you tell me when that was?” “It was May 7, five years ago, the day I was discharged from the army.” “Anything special about that day?” Roger hesitated. Should he mention giving his witness? Since he had come so far, he might as well take the plunge. “Mrs. Hanover, I explained the gospel. He pulled over to the side of the road and wept against the steering wheel. He gave his life to Christ that day.” Explosive sobs shook her body. Getting a grip on herself, she sobbed, “I had prayed for my husband’s salvation for years. I believed God would save him.” “And,” said Roger, “Where is your husband, Mrs. Hanover?” “He’s dead,” she wept, struggling with words. “He was in a car crash after he let you out of the car. He never got home. You see—I thought God had not kept His promise.” Sobbing uncontrollably, she added, “I stopped living for God five years ago because I thought He had not kept His word!”
Why Christians Sin, J. Kirk Johnston, Discovery House, 1992, pp. 39-41
To operate in Christian love we have to own the love that God has for us.
Love a lot
Lose a lot
Leave a legacy
This is the first secret of love.
In 1 corinthians chapter 13 it says love is not happy with evil but is happy with the truth – Jesus is the truth ansd when we receive him we become who we are meant to be.
So deal with the lack take ownership of the love that god has poured out for you.
Thirdly I would encourage you to get a vision of how you can love the world around you.
When you do the world around you will be transformed all around you.
People who do this are world changers and impact on so many lives.
1 corinthoans chapter 13 encourages us to grow up. But strangely the more I grow up into Christ the more childlike and juvenile the world can think I am.
When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
Vision looks past the norms of any society and looks for Kingdom norms and seeks to implement them in their own lives so that they can in turn love the world that God so loved.
There are many great Christians that we can talk abvout but some who have loved the world would be:
Jackie pulinger
History[edit]
At the age of 21,[citation needed] Pullinger graduated from the Royal College of Music having specialized in the oboe. She wanted to be a missionary, so she wrote to various missionary organizations. Unable to find support from missionary organizations, she sought advice from Richard Thompson, a minister in Shoreditch, who told her that she should buy a ticket for a boat going as far as she could get and to pray to know when to get off the boat. At first she wanted to go to Africa, but then she had a dream that impressed upon her the idea of going to Hong Kong.[2] She followed vicar's advice and went to Hong Kong by boat in 1966. However, when she arrived she knew no one there and had only HK$100 on hand.[3] The only reason the immigration officers allowed her in was because her mother's godson was a police officer there.[4] She found work as a primary school teacher in the Kowloon Walled City, which in the 1960s was not policed and consequently had become one of the world's largest opium producing centres, run by Chinese criminal Triad gangs.[5] She established a youth club to help drug addicts and street sleepers.
St Stephen's Society[edit]
Pullinger at work in her center in the Kowloon Walled City in 1988.
In 1981, she started a charity called the St Stephen's Society which provides rehabilitation homes for recovering drug addicts, prostitutes, and gang members. By December 2007 it had grown and was providing homes for 200 people.[6] The charity's work has been recognized by the Hong Kong government who donated the land for the rehabilitation homes.[7] The intervention process that the drug addicts go through is very intensive. Instead of giving them medications they are put into a room for 10 days, and prayed over and cared for by a group of ex-addicts.[7]
Steve Saint is another whose Father was killed in south America he went in and cared for the very people who had murdered his family. Steve has pioneered evangelism to the ________Auca_______people and recently was paralised but is plowing on following Christ. This is love with vision
Heidi Bakker is another she has revolutionised Holy spirit vision in the modern era and her statement Stop for the one has blessed so many people.
Saint was born in Quito, Ecuador at a mission hospital. He was the second of Nate and Marj Saint's three children. He has an older sister, Kathy, and a younger brother, Philip. The family lived in Quito, Ecuador where his father was a missionary pilot with Mission Aviation Fellowship. In 1956, his father and four other missionaries were killed by Huaorani Indians during Operation Auca, in an effort to make peaceful contact with them.
After the death of Saint's father, the family moved to Quito where Saint attended school. It was during this time that his aunt, Rachel Saint, and Elisabeth Elliot successfully made peaceful contact with the Huaorani and were living with them in the jungle. At 10 years of age, Saint first went to live with the Huaorani, staying with them during the summers. He learned about living in the jungle, and also developed relationships with many members of the tribe. In June 1965, "Babae", as he was called by the tribe, was baptized in the Curaray River by Kimo and Dyuwi, two of his father's killers who had since converted to Christianity.
Love with vision will change the world
William wilerforce was another who had love and vision he almost single handed stopped slavery in the 19th century and transformed the modern world.
Love a lot
Lose a lot
Leave a legacy
Here is another example of vision with love.
I was reading about the 18th century German sculptor Johann Heinrich von Dannecker. His skills were impressive. He could bring stone to life with his tools. At the height of his powers, he wanted to do something special with his gifts -- he wanted to shape a statue of Christ that would stand out as a witness to his world. For two years he chiselled and scraped and polished the marble, till he was certain that it carried the likeness of his Lord. But he wanted to test his work on eyes that wouldn’t lie. So he went out to the street, and brought in a young girl. He took her into his studio, and he set her down in front of the shrouded stone. Uncovering it, he asked her, Do you know who this is? No, sir! she replied. But he must be a very great man. And Dannecker knew that he’d failed. The statue was good enough for kings and nobles, but it wasn’t good enough to speak the word about Christ.
He was discouraged. He was disheartened. He was depressed. But he knew that he had to try again. So he set his hand to the task. Six years it took him this time! Every day, painstakingly, shaping and carving. Finally it was done. And again, he brought in a child as his first critic. He took off the shroud, and asked her gently, Who is that? Legend has it that tears came to her eyes as she recognized Jesus. It was enough. Dannecker had finished his task. He had created his masterpiece. He had given visible shape to his faith. And later, to a friend, he told the secret of those last six years. It was as if, he said, Christ had joined him daily in his little room. He felt the nearness of his Lord. He sensed the glory of his Presence. All Dannecker had to do, really, was to transfer the vision of Christ that he received to the block of marble.
It’s a powerful story, isn’t it? But there’s more to it. There’s another chapter that comes later, one so striking that it actually makes John’s vision come alive.
Some years later, the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte saw Dannecker’s work. He was very impressed. He sent for the sculptor, and he had a commission for him -- Make me a statue of the goddess Venus for the Louvre! he said. Quite an honor! To be chosen as the creator of a work of art like that! Who could refuse? But you know what?! Dannecker did! He refused the commission. He gave up that honor. And you know why? This is what he told Napoleon:
"A man who has seen Christ can never employ his gifts in carving out a pagan goddess!"
Finally establish Christlike love in your life.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails.
You can’t extablish love like that without the presence of your Holy Spirit in your life.
You need to start a love building program in your life.
You kind of just keep on building.
2 Peter 1:5-15New International Version (NIV)
5 For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. 8 For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.
10 Therefore, my brothers and sisters,[a] make every effort to confirm your calling and election. For if you do these things, you will never stumble, 11 and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Love a lot
Lose a lot
Leave a legacy
I want to conclude with two stories of love – stories that may serve to inspire you to get more personally involved in loving others.
Both stories are from Bramwell Booth son of General William booth founder of the Salvation Army.
One morning way back in the eighties I was an early caller at his house at Clapton. Here I found him in his dressing room, completing his toilet witrh ferocious energy. The hair brushes which he held in either hand being yielded with quite eloquent vigour upn a main that was more refractory than usual, and his braces were flying like the wings of Pegasus, No good morning how do you do here!
“Bramwell,” he cried, when he caught sight of me, “Did you know that men slept out all night on the bridges?”
He had arrived in London very late the night before from some town in the south of England, and had to cross the city to reach his home. What he had seen in the midnight return accounted for this morning tornado. Did I know that men slept out all night on the bridges?
Well yes”, I replied,”A lot of poor fellows, I suppose, do this.”
“then you ought to be ashamed of yourself to have known it and have done nothing for them,” he went on. Vehemently. I began to speak of the difficulties, burdened as we were already, of taking up all sorts of Poor law wordk, and so forth.
My Father stopped me with a peremptory wave of the brushes.
“Go and do something?,” he said. “We must do something”
“What can we do?”
“”Get them a shelter!”
“That will cost money.”
“Well that is your affair! Something must be done. Ger hold of a warehouse and warm it, and find something to cover them. But mind Bramwell no coddling!”
That was the beginning of the Salvation army Shelters.
BRamwell Booth goes on to say that the uplifting guidance in Booths life was the Holy Spirit.
This is love in action.
Another story from Bramwell Booths childhood.
Late one Sunday night in whiechapel when I was about twelve or thirteen years of age, I was walking home with the Founder when he led me for the first time into a drinking saloon. I have never forgotten the effect that the wcene produced upon me. The place was crowded with men, many of them bearing on their faces the marks of brutishness and vice, and with women also, dishevelled and drunken, in some cases with tiny children in their arms. There in the brilliantly lighted place, noxious with the fumes of drink and tobacco, and reeking with filth, my father, holding me by the hand, mert my inquiring gaze and said, “Willie, these are our people, these are the people I want you to live for and bring to Christ. The impression never left me.
Friends it is your job to love as Christ loved.
Patient and kind and so much else yes.
But unless your love like water over parched ground doesn’t seep into the cracks in societies floor and offer refreshment into the deepest and lonely crevices unless it raises up bodies off the desert ffloor so that the vallies of dry bones come to life under the searing search light of Christs love then we will have failed.
Identify the lack in your own life = Own his salvation and receive his love. Gain his vision and establish Christlike love in your life and you will have breathed God’s love into a world gone mad.
Love a lot
Lose a lot
Leave a legacy
