A Perfect Combination
“Love Never Ends…”
1 Corinthians 13:8-10
Some things are a perfect combination… Chocolate and Carmel is pretty close. White chocolate and dark chocolate is mighty good! But Chocolate and peanut butter – that’s a perfect combination – in my humble opinion.
Today we will look at the perfect combination of God’s love and eternal life. God lavishly gives you his love – without the limitations of time or space. Now that’s a perfect combination!
A Taste of Love – 1 Corinthians 13
A Bold Flavor – The Supremacy of Love
A Startling Essence – The Nature of Love
A Perfect Combination – The Perfection of Love
What the World says about Love
Have you ever “Googled” your name? It’s interesting… and a little scary. You really should try it sometime.
Well, I googled the word love this past week and I got 417,000,000 hits. Here are the top ten websites on Love according to Google…
The Love Calculator
Calculates the chance on a successful relationship between two people.
Love Poems And Quotes
Romantic Love Poetry & More
Romantic love poems, love quotes, famous quotes, friendship poems, etc. Free love poetry contest.
Free LoveTest
love & personality tests
Get romantic advice and tips based on the answers to your love test.
iLoveLanguages
Your Guide to Languages on the Web
The Human-Languages Page is a comprehensive catalog of language-related Internet resources.
Lovingyou.com
Love, Romance and Relationship Resources
A collection of love, romance and relationships resources including advice, poetry, quotes, dedications, chat, horoscopes, romantic ideas, message boards, ...
Love Actually
Official site with plot, cast and crew, photographs, downloads, and trailers.
Locks of Love
Provides hair prosthetics for children with long-term medical hair loss, free of charge or on a sliding scale. Includes information on donating human hair ...
The Stranger - Home
... classifieds, personals and the home of Savage Love. ... WHERE TOAST IS LOVE. Dinette Works Magic on a Humble Standard BY SARA DICKERMAN ...
Love Actually (2003)
Love Actually - Cast, Crew, Reviews, Plot Summary, Comments, Discussion, Taglines, Trailers, Posters, Photos, Showtimes, Link to Official Site, Fan Sites.
Positive & Encouraging K-LOVE
Christian Gospel music online Klove radio stations artists such as Jon Sherry Rivers David Pierce Julie Williams Denver Phoenix Chicago.
What God says about Love
8 Love never ends. There are gifts of prophecy, but they will be ended. There are gifts of speaking in different languages, but those gifts will stop. There is the gift of knowledge, but it will come to an end. 9 The reason is that our knowledge and our ability to prophesy are not perfect. 10 But when perfection comes, the things that are not perfect will end.
1 Corinthians 13:8-10 (NCV)
The Works of God Will End
Prophecy
The work of the MESSENGER “…will be ended,”
Destroyed, done away with, rendered idle and inactivated
Prophesy is “forth telling” or speaking the truth of God in a persuasive and powerful way. It is the proclamation of God’s good news.
And it will be ended. Literally it will be destroyed and gutted. It will be rendered idle, made inactive and inoperable.
In other words prophesy – preaching and teaching of the truth about God will come to an abrupt stop.
No preaching of sermons by church Pastors. (Don’t get too excited – we aren’t there yet!). No more evangelists, teachers, preachers, apostles, and missionaries. The proclamation of truth will come to a dead stop.
Speaking in different languages
The authentication of the MIRACULOUS “… will stop.”
To make to cease, restrained
Literally “different languages” is the word in greek for tongues or dialects and languages. 1 Corinthians 13 is a chapter that rests between the 12 chapter in which Paul writes and speaks of the unity of the body of Christ in spite of a variety of spiritual gifts – including the gift of tongues – and the 14th chapter which chastises the Corinthian church for abusing spiritual gifts and establishes some guidelines for their appropriate use as a sign to unbelievers.
It is a miraculous power to show that God is at work in our world.
The word used here is a word that means to pause or cease functioning. Here is a spiritual gift that will simply leave off and not be there.
Knowledge
The need for the MESSAGE “…will come to an end”
Gnosis. If you have heard of the “Gnostics” you have heard of people who believe in having special wisdom and knowledge. Hidden secrets that – once possessed – give you great power in life.
This will come to the same result as prophesy. Gnosis will be abolished and ended. There will be no need of it.
No more study of the Bible. No more theological debates and discussions. No more parsing of passages and explaining the meaning of difficult phraseology. No more scholars and scholarship to understand the mysteries of truth and knowledge of our world.
Why will all this come to an end? Because it is all imperfect and…
Everything Imperfect Will End
The work of the messenger, the authentication of the miraculous signs, and the even the need for the message itself will come to a sudden and screeching halt – as if God himself was standing on the brake pedal. For one simple reason – these works and words are not final product of God’s plan for man.
The word perfect that is used here is a word that means completed or finished. In other words – mature. Full-grown and done.
These three important gifts to humanity – prophesy, miraculous tongues and knowledge are an imperfect, immature, unfinished and incomplete processes of revelation pointing to the ultimate perfect combination – God’s love and eternal life.
Prophesy, tongues, and knowledge are to perfection what a 16 year old teenager is to fully matured person.
The one is growing swiftly, sporadically, and unevenly. They have a good start on what the fully completed person will be – but they aren’t anywhere near the finished product.
Go back and look at your HS year book if you dare and you will see a foreshadowing of what is to come. A partial image of a future reality.
Most of parenting a teenage is in the process of polishing and finish work. The difficult piece is getting them to understand that they don’t know what they don’t know and you can’t tell them. Well, you can tell them but their ears don’t work so good at that age.
The reality is that they are not whole – they are an incomplete and partial picture of the truth which we simply do not know yet.
This January I’m going to teach on how we believers are living “Between a rock and a good place” – We are on here on this rock called earth which is a physical place and we simply don’t really belong anymore. We have given our allegiance to Jesus and our citizenship is not of this world – but we live here.
We look forward to a new world – a different kind of world that is not like this one at all – the problem is that we haven’t seen it yet and we know only a little about this good place. In the series of messages in January we’re going to learn what we must do to survive in this world while we prepare for the world to come.
Everything Perfect Will Never End
Most people think of heaven as a place. St. Peter stands at pearly gates, checking his computer printout of who’s naughty and nice.
They envision a great expansive plateau covered with a wispy fog where everyone wanders about with glossy translucent wings and occasionally plucks on a harp or looks over the edge to see what’s happening down on earth.
If you are a little more sophisticated your image is of modern suburbia with golden asphalt and huge McMansions laid out on winding streets. This view of eternity is built on heaven more. More stuff. More that will make me happy!
My Grandpa’s favorite story is about a cat that died and went to heaven. The Lord said, “You’ve been such a good cat. What can I do for you to make your stay in heaven comfortable? The cat said, “Lord, all my life the family I lived with made me sleep on a hard floor. I’ve never had a nice bed. Could you do something about that?” And so the Lord said, “Say no more. You’ve got it.” And .. poof! .. a nice fluffy pillow appeared. The Lord went on His way.
A few days later six mice were killed by a mowing machine, and they all went to heaven together. To them the Lord said, “You’ve been good little mice. What can I do for you to make your stay in heaven comfortable?” The mice said, “You know, Lord, we’ve been running all our lives. We’ve had to run from cats and dogs, we’ve had to run from mowing machines, we’ve even had to run from women brandishing brooms and kitchen knives. We’re too tired to run anymore.” The Lord said, “Say no more”. And poof ... each mouse was fitted with a tiny set of roller skates, to make it easier to scoot around God’s heaven.
A few days later the Lord stopped by to see the cat and found him snoozing on his fluffy pillow. “How’s it going, cat? How do you like my heaven?” The cat stretched and yawned, “It’s wonderful here. It’s even better than I expected. Everything is beautiful. My pillow is comfortable. But the very best thing of all was those Meals on Wheels!”
I hope that’s not your image of heaven – more things – more mansions, more gold, more crowns, more meals on wheels.
If it is it is completely wrong. It is built on an imperfect world and you have missed the lessons of the perfect reality.
Heaven is not about “having”. Heaven is about “being”. Joy comes from sharing whatever you have with someone you love. Fulfillment is not measured by how much you have. Genuine fulfillment is measured by who is at your side.
That’s true here and now.
It’s also true there and then.
Everything Perfect Will Never End
Hell is exactly the opposite.
Now somebody will say, “Hell?! We don’t know and don’t want to know about that unpleasant thought.”
“Hell” to some is simply a four-letter word to get people’s attention and express frustration! For others it is an outdated medieval concept. They can’t imagine an eternal punishment for anyone.
Well, hell is a reality with which we have to deal. And while we know only in part, most of us know quite a lot about hell already.
Hell is not fire, sulfur fumes, lava flows and little red devils with pitchforks. Hell is not about being stuck ten thousand miles under the crust of the earth.
Hell is about separation from God. Hell is about being completely disconnected from love. Hell is about living for one’s self. Hell is about frustration, alienation, pain, self-hatred.
“Hell is me trying to be me trying to be me trying to be me, in an endless downward spiral where at the bottom line there is no freedom, no fresh air, and not a scintilla of joy.” - Joe Smith
Hell is refusing God’s love. Hell is going farther and farther into the wilderness, away from God, away from those who love us, away even from ourselves. Hell is eternal death; it is death that won’t quit dying. I am not talking so much about a place as I am a condition. We know about in part, but we do know something about hell from experience.
In hell there is no companionship; there is only aloneness. In hell there is no fellowship with God and no caring for anyone else.
Some of us are tasting hell already. We are living a prelude to what is to come.
We taste the sulfur and fire of hell when we push the people aside who just might try to love us. We touch the lava flows of hell when caustic words criticize and complain bitterly about our place in life.
It is a hell we have created – not God. We have fashioned it from the stuff of loneliness and self-imposed bitterness.
Fulfillment is not measured by how much you have or how much you are the center of attention. Real, authentic, genuine and perfect fulfillment is measured by who is alongside you. That is true in this life. That is also true in the life to come
Everything Perfect Will Never End
Love is God’s perfection that will never end
Paul says that Love will never end. Then he says that prophecies will come to an end. Tongues will cease and finally, knowledge will come to an end.
That’s not all that will end. Everything imperfect will end. Wealth will come to an end. Prestige will come to an end. All our achievements will finally come to an end. Why, even Lambeau Field in Green Bay will come to an end!
Love will never end because love is the perfect and completion of life.
God’s pursuit of us never stops. God’s desire to know us and love us back to Himself never wavers.
God’s love and eternal life is the perfect combination. This is heaven. That is the life or death difference, the heaven or hell difference. Where God is – for he is love, he is the perfection – there is heaven. Where God is shut out, there is hell.
You Have Never Been Unloved
I have seen God’s love reach out to a young air force couple as we opened the book of Romans and learned – imperfectly about God’s Heaven and Man’s Hell. I saw the man grow pale and tears well up in her eyes as they realized the separation and pain sin had brought into their lives.
I have seen the anxious need for a manager of a retail store who had served in the army as a lieutenant leading patrols of men through the jungles of Viet Nam ask to be baptized in Lake Superior because he wanted his sins buried in a deep, dark, and cold place.
I have seen an 83 year old german woman come up out of the baptistery and cry “I feel like a baby”.
I have watched people for some 35 years of ministry yield their lives to Jesus as their lord and savior. And I have watched others turn from this love. God’s perfect love.
I sat down with a man who with the sweat-bathed brow of a dying man, said, “When I get hold of my problem with alcohol – then I’ll come to church and God.” I spoke at his funeral two months later.
I have seen a woman with cancer waste away while calling on her children to come to God. She had turned to him in her last months of life and she deeply regretted her neglect of spiritual things – but now days before death claimed her, she claimed life!
God’s love never gives up! The love of God, how rich, how free, how measureless and strong! The love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell. It goes beyond the highest star and reaches to the lowest hell.
The only place I have seen God’s love stopped is at the threshold of a cold, proud heart that thought it could claim rewards in heaven and didn’t know it was already in hell.
But God can turn even a proud heart into a place of his love if you will give him the opportunity. There is faith, hope and love – the greatest of these is love.
Love is God’s Perfection that Never Ends
Communion Video
Sermonspice.com Never Been Unloved 3:47
