Illus: Perhaps the answer can be illustrated by the story of the little girl who went to her mother to show her some fruit her friend gave her. The mother said, “Your friend has been very kind.” “Yes,” said the child, “She gave me more; but I gave some away.” When her mother asked who she gave them to, she answered, “I gave them to a girl who pushes me off my bicycle and makes ugly faces at me.” When her mother asked why she gave them to her, she replied, “Because, I thought it might make her know I wish to be kind to her, and she will not, perhaps, be so mean to me again.”
WHY IS GOD SO GOOD TO US? We do not have to surmise. His Word says, Romans 2:4b, “,,,knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?” Every day God is good to mankind. Day after day He is seeking to lead men to repentance as they realize how much He loves them. Yet ungodly men continue in their ungodliness. For example:
- They take God’s name in vain.
Illus: When a sinner smashes his finger with a hammer, why does he not say, “Devil damn” when he gets mad instead of taking the name of the God, Who loves him, in vain?
- They reject the teachings of this Bible so strongly that if you even suggest they read It they will get angry.
- They reject the presence of God so much that they get angry even if someone invites them to God’s house.
- They want to only be around ungodly people. They have contempt for the people of God.
It is mind boggling that day after day God showers His blessings on evil men who reject Him daily. It only makes sense when we realize God loves men and would have all to come to their senses and realize it is God Who has enriched their lives and as a result they will give their lives to Him.
Illus: Suppose you had two neighbors. One drove by every morning and dumped his trash in your front yard, but the other one, as he drove by, stopped to pick up the trash the first neighbor had thrown out. Then one day you got the news you won a million dollars on the condition you would select someone from your neighborhood and give that one a hundred thousand of the million. Now who would you give the hundred thousand to? the man who dumps trash in your yard every day, or the one who comes by and cleans it up. Without hesitation you would choose the one who has been good to you.
That would be the sensible choice.
Why is it that people will give their lives to Satan, who dumps his garbage on them every day? It is because lost mankind have not learned how to respond to love.
Illus: Suppose out of the goodness of your heart you go and wash your neighbor’s car for him next Saturday. You give it a scrubbing it has not gotten in a long time.
More than likely your neighbor will think: 1. What do you want?
2. What has happened to you? Have you “flipped”?
Why do people think like that? Because we know very little about love. However, we know a whole lot about selfishness. There are two reasons people are so unloving toward God. Both reasons have to do with WHY people do NOT KNOW HOW TO LOVE!
1. PEOPLE HAVE A WARPED VIEW OF LOVE. We are trying to teach each other about love when we ourselves have not learned the first thing about love! It is a fact that if you do not know something yourself, you can not teach others.
Illus: Our homes are bombarded nightly by movies which are produced by people who have been divorced time and time again. How can they produce an accurate picture of what love is when their view of love is so warped? How do we know their view is warped? Their lives reflect they do not know what love is. How then can they make movies about love.
If you turn your television on you will see multiplied examples of “warped” love. They televise people performing explicit sex acts and call that “making love.” What they are doing has nothing to do with love; it has to do with SIN! Yet week after week our young people, along with their elders, are brainwashed into believing this is LOVE.
Illus: Did you know you could go into any church nursery and tell the children that an apple is an orange, and say over and over again, “Orange,” and that child will grow up thinking an apple is an orange.
Americans have been watching illicit sex and been told that is love for decades. No wonder the society we live in has a warped view of love! For them to talk as experts about love:
- Is like a man who has failed the bar exam 7 or 8 times wanting to practice law.
- Is like a man who has filed for bankruptcy wanting to teach a class on managing finances.
- Is like a man who has been married 6 times wanting to open an office for marriage counseling.
When you have a society of people who have been brain-washed to believe illicit sex is love, then you have a society with a warped view of love, and their love for God will also be warped.
There is another reason people can not love God as they are supposed to. As if having a warped view is not bad enough...
2. WE ALSO HAVE A PERVERTED VIEW OF LOVE. The homosexuals are doing everything they can to promote their lifestyle as an alternate love route. Homosexuality has nothing do to with LOVE! It deals only with PERVERSIONS. It matters not if every liberal judge in the land rules it ACCEPTABLE, GOD’S WORD, that does not change, DECLARES IT AN ABOMINATION in God’s sight. In the first laws given, Leviticus 18:22, we read, “thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.”
Because man has rejected God’s instructions people’s minds have become so WARPED and PERVERTED about love they do not know how to love EACH OTHER or GOD.
The all-knowing God, knowing people would be like this, gave us His Word so we could know THE VERY NATURE OF GOD - real love. He placed one particular chapter, we call it THE LOVE CHAPTER, so all could discover WHAT REAL LOVE IS! The “love” described in this chapter is “agape” love. We are told that...
I. “AGAPE” - LOVE IS KIND.
Look at verse 4. We read, “Charity suffereth long, and is kind;..” The word translated “kind” is from the Greek word “chresteuetai,” which means: “Courteous, good, helpful, useful, giving, and showering favors.” I want to ask you something, WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU DID SOMEONE A FAVOR, OR JUST GAVE A GIFT. This does not come natural to most of us.
Illus: Christmas season is the time when most of us give gifts or do favors. Yet, even then this may not be pure giving, or favor doing. More often, IT IS A TRADE OFF. That is, if I buy you a gift worth ten dollars, you had better buy me one that costs at least ten dollars.
The “agape” - love that Paul was speaking of in our text had nothing to do with this kind of selfish giving and favors. “Agape” has to do with giving and expecting absolutely nothing in return. The kindness and service we see in some churches today is not the kind of kindness God’s Word is speaking about.
Illus: That is, when some Christians get ready to come to church they put on MORE THAN THEIR BEST CLOTHES. Many also PUT ON A FAKE SMILE and a FAKE KINDNESS.
Many can look and talk like angels until something is SAID or DONE they do not agree with.
Illus: Many remind us of the character from the television series of “The Incredible Hulk.” That is, that young, handsome man was fine until he was upset. When anyone made him mad he began to turn into a huge green monster that tore the place apart!
This is the way many folks are - calm and composed until something is said they do not like, then watch out! They can become monsters and tear a church apart. This is not the way we want to be! When we go through life sowing seeds of kindness, those will sprout in our lives over and over again.
Illus: A Yale University president, some years ago, gave this advice to a former president of Ohio State, “Always be kind to your A and B students. Someday one of them will return to your campus as a good professor.” Then he added, “Also be kind to your C students. Someday one of them will return and build a two-million-dollar science laboratory.”
We should always be kind to people because we never know how it will enrich our lives. Also, be kind because we never know what others are going through!
Illus: A train was filled with tired people. Most of them had spent the day traveling through the hot, dusty plains and at last evening had come and they all tried to settle down to a sound sleep. However, at one end of the car a man was holding a tiny baby, and as night came on the baby became restless and cried more and more. Unable to take it any longer, a big, brawny man spoke for the rest of the group. “Why don’t you take that baby to its mother?” There was a moment’s pause and then came the reply, “I’m sorry. I’m doin’ the best I can. The baby’s mother is in her casket in the baggage care ahead.” Again there was an awful silence for a moment. Then the big man, who had asked the cruel question, was out of his seat. He moved toward the man with the motherless child. He apologized for his impatience and unkind remark. He took the tiny baby in his own arms and told the tired father to get some sleep. Then in loving patience he cared for the little child all through the night.
We always need to be unselfish to everyone because we do not know what they are going through.
“AGAPE” - LOVE IS KIND. Also...
II. “AGAPE” - LOVE IS NOT SELFISH.
Look at verse 5. We read, “Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil.” Look at the words, “...seeketh not her own...” Here this means: “Does not insist upon its own rights.” That is, “agape” - love is seeking a chance to serve, not be served. In other words it is NOT SELFISH.
When people do not know how to love as the Bible teaches, you soon have a world full of selfish people. That is, they go throughout the day, “seeking” their own.
Illus: We see examples of this on the highways often. How many of you have ever been in a lane of traffic that was blocked where everyone was at the mercy of those at the head of the lane? When this happens we generally see people react in many different ways.
1. You may be driving along and spot a little gap, so you try to squeeze in, but before you can get in the man speeds up to close the gap so you can not get into the lane ahead of him. Then he drives by with a little smirk on his face, “I gotcha!”
2. Then there are those who refuse to make eye contact with you. They drive by as if you were a telephone post or something. They actually think you do not think they can see you. What good peripheral vision they have!
3. Then there are those with Christian bumper stickers all over their cars, like, “Honk if you love Jesus.” You think that surely they would let you in, so you begin to pull out, with this pitiful look, and they very angrily ball their fist up at you and scream, “What do you think you are doing?” It should be obvious to any sensible person that you were simply trying to get out of the traffic jam, but evidently that was not obvious to them!
Yes, we live in a world that does not know the first thing ABOUT REAL LOVE. People ARE SELFISH. This is so widespread that we now have a world where people feel that no one cares about them.
Someone said, “This country is going to the dogs!” Listen, it is an insult to dogs to compare this selfish society of ours to them. For example...
Illus: A Detroit officer reported he found an abandoned baby boy in a bunch of weeds. The baby would have frozen to death, but because a dog curled up around it and kept it from freezing it survived. The baby was in stable condition last report we heard, not because of mother love, but because a dog protected it.
We live in a society that has lost all compassion. HOW UNKIND WE ARE TO EACH OTHER.
Illus: Someone said that if a man falls into a pit:
- A SUBJECTIVE person comes along and says:
“I FEEL for you, down there.”
- An OBJECTIVE person comes along and says:
“It’s LOGICAL that someone would fall down there.’
- A CHRISTIAN SCIENTIST comes along and says:
“You only THINK that you are in a pit.”
- A PHARISEE comes along and says:
“Only BAD people fall into a pit.”
- A NEWS REPORTER comes along and says:
“I want the EXCLUSIVE STORY on this pit.”
- A FUNDAMENTALIST comes along and says:
“You DESERVE your pit.”
- CONFUCIUS comes along and says:
“If you HAD LISTENED TO ME, you would not be in that pit.”
- BUDDHA comes along and says:
“Your pit is ONLY A STATE OF MIND.”
- A REALIST comes along and says:
“That’s a PIT!”
- THE COUNTY INSPECTOR comes along and asks:
“Did you have a PERMIT to dig a pit.”
- A SELF-PITYING person comes along and says:
“You haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen MY PIT!!”
- AN OPTIMIST comes along and says:
“Things COULD BE WORSE!”
- A PESSIMIST comes along and says:
“Things WILL GET WORSE!”
But listen, when the Lord comes along, with His love for mankind, HE SAYS, “LET ME HELP YOU OUT OF THE PIT!” This was exactly what David said, in Psalm 40:1-2, “...I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.”
In order to learn not to have a WARPED LOVE or a PERVERTED LOVE, we must learn to be like Jesus. We must care about people. We can not just care about ourselves! Then we will no longer be selfish. We will learn how to LOVE EACH OTHER and GOD!
Illus: David Livingstone wrote in his journal on one occasion concerning his “selfless” life: “People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paying back a small part of the great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind and a bright hope of glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege.”
--Giving and Living, by Samuel Young, Baker Book House, p.71
“AGAPE” - LOVE IS NOT SELFISH. Also...
III. “AGAPE” - LOVE IS PURE.
Look at verse 6. We read, “Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth.” One of the ways you can tell when a church is NOT filled with “agape” love is when the members rejoice in INIQUITY, not in the TRUTH! For example...
Illus: A fellow by the name, Smith, and another named Jones, attended the same church. However, they has some serious disagreements with each other and they were “on the outs” with each other over a very trivial matter. This deeply concerned Deacon Brown, so he prayed that he might be a peacemaker.
He called on Smith and asked, “What do you think of Jones?” “He’s the meanest crank in the neighborhood!” Deacon Brown said, “But, you have to admit that he’s very kind to his family.” “Oh sure, he’s kind to his family all right; no one can deny that.”
The next day Deacon Brown went to Jones and inquired, “Do you know what Smith said about you?” “No, but I can imagine how that scamp would lie about me!” “This may surprise you, but he said you’re very kind to your family.” “What! Did Smith say that?” “Yes, he did.” Then Deacon Brown asked, “What do you think of Smith?” Jones said, “Truthfully, I believe he’s a low down scalawag.” Deacon Brown said, “But you have to admit that he’s very honest in business.” “Yes, there’s no getting around that; in business he’s a man you can trust.”
The next day Brother Brown called on Smith again. “You know what Jones said about you? He claims you’re a fellow that really can be trusted in business, and that you’re scrupulously honest.” “You mean it?” “Yes, I do,” said Brown. “Well of all things,” replied Smith with a happy smile.
The next Sunday the former “enemies” nodded to each other. Brown continued his “meddling” until the next annual business meeting of the church, when Smith and Jones shook hands, they finally voted on the same side!
We all need to understand that the only kind of “meddler” that God is pleased with is someone who has enough of God’s love to be “a holy meddler!”
“AGAPE” - LOVE IS PURE.
IV. “AGAPE” - LOVE ENDURES.
Look at verse 7. We read, “Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” The word translated “endure” is “houpmenei,” a military term meaning: “Standing against the attacks of an enemy.” The reason many today do not know how to stay in their marriages is because they do not have God’s “agape” - love. “Agape” love endures. The reason many do not stay in church as people once did is because they do not have God’s “agape” - love. “Agape” - love endures.
Conclusion/Summary:
II. “AGAPE” - LOVE IS KIND.
II. “AGAPE” - LOVE IS NOT SELFISH.
III. “AGAPE” - LOVE IS PURE.
IV. “AGAPE” - LOVE ENDURES.
