A Taste of Love
A Bold Flavor – November 6
The Supremacy of Love
Words – Love = Noise
Knowledge – Love = Nothing
Sacrifice – Love = Loss
Last week we spoke of the “Supremacy of love”. Without love words are noise, wisdom and knowledge are nothing and sacrifice is loss.
It is Love that fills the void in life and makes us whole for one simple and powerful reason – God is love and we are made in his image.
A Taste of Love
A Startling Essence – November 13
The Nature of Love
Did you enjoy your jelly bellies? Did some of the flavors catch you by surprise? Did you pick out one expecting one flavor and getting another?
Today we speak of the nature of love which is the startling essence of humanity.
This is what happens when you first discover love. You are trundling along through life looking in all the bright corridors, checking al the dark corners, and popping open the closed doors searching for what ever it is that gives you the warmth, peace, and satisfaction in your soul – kind of like a hot bowl of soup on a cold snowy day. And when you find it – it catches you by surprise.
Why? Because so few people really understand the nature of love. We fall in love like we fall into a ditch, or we fall out of love like we fall out of a tree.
Tragically for many, love is a throwaway word. It has become cheap and tawdry. For some it is a euphemism for sex. It is used by many to describe their affinity for ice cream. For others it is simply a way to say that they really, really, really like someone – a lot.
You can go to the movies every day of the week and see chick flicks – one right after another and they’ll teach you that love is accidental, instantaneous, everlasting, and never changes diapers.
You can go to the big box store and buy stacks of CD’s with singers of every type of music recording what love had done to them, in them and for them.
You can download music of every variety into your ipod and be surrounded 24/7 with songs about love.
Some are Big Band musicians, some are mellow crooners, some are rock and roll, some are acid rock, some are rap and some are country - far too many are country…
Watch this and you’ll see what I mean… (Video Burl Chesnut – “Picking on Love” – 1:04, SermonSpice.com
Love…
All of this illustrates the message of 1 Corinthians 13. Love doesn’t just happen to people. Love comes from God and changes people.
Love is none of these things that our books, movies, and music describe because love is not a noun. Love is a verb. It involves the practice of a decision and a way of living – and when you experience love – it is startling.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 contains the best description of the nature of love found anywhere in literature. Let’s read it…
Love…
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It is not rude, 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.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7
The Nature of Love
Love is patient
Patient means “someone who is able to avenge himself yet refrains from doing so.” It also carries with it the idea of long suffering. Patience puts up with someone else’s shortcomings.
Some people are “EGR’s” (Extra Grace Required). They just demand more grace from us. This is patience.
Let me tell you about a man named Jack. He was a believer in the Lake Superior Christian Church where I ministered in Marquette. Jack had “Turrets’ Syndrome” and often couldn’t control his speech. He was unable to stop himself from blurting out curse words, rude language, and language that would make a pirate blush – and sometimes he would do it in church.
Jack got a job delivering birthday balloons and singing Happy Birthday. Like stutterers, victims of turret’s can sing fine because it is a different part of the brain. Anyway, I made an appointment to meet him for lunch at the Marquette Big Boy at noon when it was filled with construction workers, lumberjacks and steel miners. In walks Jack wearing a black tuxedo trimmed out in pink. He sits down opposite from me and for the next hour blurts out loudly and repeatedly – sometimes 8 or ten times in a minute – one word. The word for the day was “homosexual.” This was 25 years ago and in Marquette, in the Big Boy, with enough flannel shirts to circle the globe, if you tied the sleeves together, an hour with a guy in a pink trimmed tuxedo calling you a homosexual in a loud voice makes for a long, long lunch.
Yet, while other people didn’t even try to understand his problems – he was physically attacked more than once – he was accepted and loved by the church at Marquette. This requires the practice of love as expressed through patience and long suffering.
Love is kind
Kindness means “show oneself useful.” Love volunteers to help others when they’re in need. If you truly love someone you will be kind to them.
It goes beyond asking someone who is hurting to, “Let me know what I can do.” People rarely comply with this request because it really doesn’t mean very much. Kindness takes over a dish of food, a bag of fruit, or rakes up the leaves when there is sickness or the death of a loved one.
Kindness seeks out what another needs and gives it. It doesn’t wait to be asked. This is love.
Love does not envy
Instead of wishing that I had what you have, love helps me to celebrate what God has given you. It is excited to see your joy and shares your moment of triumph.
And in some ways it is more fun. Some years ago Donna and I gave a car to our daughter Sandi. Don’t get too excited – it was a Toyota with 80,000 miles on it. We put a bow on the hood and put it in the front yard for her to see when she got home from college. I will never forget how excited Shannon was for her sister Sandi… That’s when I knew our daughters really did love each other in spite of all the battles over clothing and shoes!
Love does not boast
This word literally means a “braggart” and is used nowhere else in the Bible. It can also mean, “wind-bag.” Love does not brag about what I have or what I’ve done. Love is quiet and humbly accepts all good things with a kind of peaceful joy.
Love is not proud
The word here means to “blow or to puff.” Pride has no place in a believer’s life because everything we have is by grace. What is there that you have that does not ultimately come from another or from God himself.
The family prayer at the meal is important because it calls us to remember – 3 times in most days – what we have received from our God.
Love is not rude
The Greek word means that love does not “behave in an ugly, indecent or obscene manner.” Love acts in a worthy way.
Love has class. It is gracious and always allows the other person a way out of embarrassment or foolishness.
Love is not self-seeking
This is the polar opposite of agape love. True love does not seek to build up self but rather puts others first. In fact, love is passionately focused on what is good for another person.
Love is not easily angered
A person who is living under the influence of love is not “prone” to violent anger or exasperation. Love is like a blanket that smoothers the flames of an explosive temper.
Anger unleashed on the spirit of another person is as corrosive as acid on skin – especially if that spirit is your child or your mate.
Love keeps no record of wrongs
This is an accounting term meaning that we must not add up and itemize the failures of others. Love does not keep lists of wrongs done to it. Instead of remembering everything that’s ever been done to us, we should wipe out those wrongs by forgiving and by refusing to hold people hostage to what they’ve done in the past. Instead of being so tough on people who sin differently than we do, let’s learn to give grace by cutting others some slack.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth
We should not enjoy hearing about other people’s sins or focus on the bad stuff that happens in our world.
The word “truth” here is the opposite of “evil.” Instead of locking into the vices of others, love celebrates and applauds the virtues of those around us.
Love always protects
The image here is of a blanket that covers, or hides things.
The artist who painted the portrait of Alexander the Great made the shadow of Alexander’s hand conceal a scar on his brow.
When you really care for a person, instead of exposing their blemishes and sins, you covers them with a blanket of love.
1 Peter 4:8 challenges us to, “Love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”
When I am quick to notice fault and tell others about it, I am not practicing love.
Matthew tells us to go to our brother if he sins against us. If we do this every time we are slighted, forgotten, put down, and hurt by a brother – we’ll be at their home every evening. Some sins can be overwhelmed by love.
Love always trusts
The idea here is that we don’t lose faith in others even if they’ve messed up or hurt us. We resist the temptation to think the worst. We delight in giving people second and third chances.
Everyone deserves a second chance – and everyone needs a second chance – sometimes three or four times in a day!
Love always hopes
“Hope” means “to expect with desire.”
No matter how dark things are or how bleak things look; love maintains an attitude of hope that they can get better.
It’s the refusal to take failure as final. There is hope as long as there is life.
Love always perseveres
This literally means, “to remain under.” Love hangs in there with others in long-term relationships. There is a loyalty in love that goes beyond what you can do for me. It’s about belonging to one another.
Listen, we who are bonded together in mutual love of Jesus are now part of a great family. We’re going to spend eternity with each other so we might as well enjoy each other and get along now.
It is the Nature of Love to be Practiced
A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
John 13:34
We are to love one another. Three times Jesus tells us in these two verses to love one another – each time with a different reason.
First: Because I say so. It is the command of the Lord Jesus.
Second: Because I have shown you. I loved you – now you love one another.
Finally, Because all will see that you are my disciples – if you love one another.
Command, Example, Proof of our commitment to Jesus – now let’s go and do it – let’s practice love.
