Short Subjects - Love

We're back with another important topic - Love.  The focus is love in action toward people.

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Hello everyone. Welcome back to Jeff's Bible Trek. We are in a series called Short Subjects, as each subject will be covered in a single episode. This episode is on the subject of love. Now in our last episode on forgiveness, I mentioned that forgiveness is probably the most important subject of all. And some of you may have cocked your head to one side, frowned, and thought, I would think love is the most important subject of all. Well, I'm here to admit you make a good point. You would also be making a good point if you said that love and forgiveness are commingled. So the first episode on forgiveness could have been called love part one. Conversely, this episode on love could have been called forgiveness part two. Regardless, we're covering both topics. Now, love is obviously a huge topic in the Bible, and you may be wondering how I'm going to cover it in one episode. Well, hang with me and you'll see. But I want to focus for a minute on the two greatest commandments, which encapsulate all of the law and the prophets. You know what they are, I think. The greatest commandment is you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Now that's found in Deuteronomy six, four and five. The second greatest commandment is you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And that's found in Leviticus nineteen, eighteen. Now here's a nagging question some of you may have. Why are these two commandments the two greatest commandments excluded from the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5? You know, the ones written on tablets of stone by God Himself. Some of you already know the answer to this question, but I'm going to answer it anyway. The answer is the two greatest commandments are not excluded from the Ten Commandments, but are the foundation upon which the Ten Commandments are built. The commandment to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength is covered by the first four of the Ten Commandments and describe what loving God looks like. While the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself is covered by the other six of the Ten Commandments and describe what loving people looks like. What I'd like to do is focus on the second greatest commandment. Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, why aren't you dealing with the greatest commandment? Well, there are two key reasons. First, that would have to have been covered in a series, not an episode. Secondly, those of you who listen to me on a regular basis are aware that I have read up on near-death experiences. And a very common question asked by Jesus when people appear before him is have you learned to love? And the context of that question is how you treated people in your life. Many of these near-death experiencers are shown a life review by Jesus, in which they are shown what amounts to a movie of their life from a third-person perspective. Now, people get a little ticked off in these life reviews that Jesus doesn't show any of their accomplishments in their life and career during this life review. Instead, the emphasis is on how they loved and treated people in both good ways and bad. And of course, the majority of these people, once they are revived from death, are completely different in the way they treat family, friends, and everyone else they come in contact with. Studies have been made of people 20 years after their near-death experience, and they are still living a changed life and loving people. I am the Lord. The first half of that verse, you shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, kinda sounds like our forgiveness and unforgiveness topic, doesn't it? Well that part of the verse right there shows us how love and forgiveness are intertwined. Now let's take a slight detour and define this word, love. I want to talk about the Aramaic word for love first, since that was the dominant language spoken in Jesus' day. The Aramaic word for love is huba, H-O-O-B-A, and it is a homonym, that is, a word that sounds like another word, that also means to set on fire. It is difficult to fully express the meaning of this word and translate it into English. You could say the Aramaic concept is burning love or fiery love, coming from the inner depths of the heart as an eternal energy, an active power of bonding hearts and lives in secure relationships. Wow, that's powerful. The Greek word is agape, which most of you have heard, and which describes the highest form of love. It is the love God has for his people. It is an intense affection that listen carefully, that must be demonstrated. It is a loyal, endless and unconditional commitment of love. Feelings are attached to this love. It is not abstract, but devoted to, again, demonstrating the inward feelings of love toward another with outward acts of kindness and benevolence. So to repeat, the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself has more to do with our everyday interactions with people and how we treat them. This command is quoted seven times in the New Testament, twice in Matthew and once each in Mark and Luke. Paul quotes it twice in Romans 13 9 and Galatians 5 14. And then James quotes it and calls it the royal law in James 2 8. Other passages teach the same principle without quoting it directly. The apostle John was a big proponent of the topic and wrote about it a lot. I like one thing he says in first John three, eighteen and nineteen. Beloved children, our love can't be an abstract theory we only talk about, but a way of life demonstrated through our loving deeds. We know that the truth lives within us because we demonstrate love in action, which will reassure our hearts in His presence. Once again, that is love defined right there. I want to come back to 1 Corinthians 13 because all roads of the royal law converge there. Many people call this the love chapter, but it's important to set the context of this chapter as to where it sits within the book of 1 Corinthians. Quite simply, the context is spiritual gifts, particularly public spiritual gifts. In the previous chapter, 1 Corinthians 12, Paul talks about how God has sprinkled spiritual gifts throughout the body of Christ, and how important it is to have a diversity of gifts. The problem in Corinth came in when the flesh got in people's way in the form of competition. People began to look down on other members of the church, claiming that their spiritual gift was better and more important than those of others. This is where you find the discussion about the human body and how every part is necessary. Every part. Now, some say some parts aren't necessary, such as you know, some people might throw out the tonsils or the appendix. However, Paul doesn't mention any of those, but rather the eye and the hand and the head and the foot. You know, important stuff, stuff you need. In the same way, the parts of our physical bodies are diverse and do different things, so are spiritual gifts diverse in their function. In chapter 14, the other bookend to chapter 13, Paul is talking about public spiritual gifts that encourage people, build them up, and bring them comfort, and those that don't. The ones specifically mentioned are prophecy, which is spoken in the language everyone understands, and the other gift is the gift of an utterance in tongues which doesn't edify anyone unless there is someone with the companion public gift of the interpretation of tongues. Those who give prophecies are the ones who encourage, build up, and comfort the church with their gift. So do the companion gifts of tongues and interpretation together. But if someone just gives an utterance in tongues without knowing whether there is an interpreter there or not, that person advances his own spiritual progress, Paul says, which is Paul's nice way of saying the person is just showing off. Now, let me pause here and talk for a few minutes about my own history with public spiritual gifts. When I first started going to church after giving my life to Jesus in April of 1976, these three gifts, prophecy, utterance in tongues, and interpretation of the utterance in tongues, operated almost every Sunday. These public gifts were given by people known to the church and its leadership to actually possess these gifts. When I came to Oregon in 1988, I started going to a church where there was a guy who frequently gave an utterance in tongues. The problem was, even though there were interpreters in the church, about half the time no interpretation came forth when this guy gave his utterances. It was pretty obvious that this guy was just trying to impress people and had been subjected to correction because one Sunday morning he started in on an utterance in tongues, and a staff member stepped to the pulpit and told him several times to stop until he did. So sometimes public spiritual gifts work smoothly, and sometimes it's messy. Now things evidently were somewhat messy in Corinth when 1 Corinthians was written, which is the reason for Paul's last verse of chapter 12, where he says, and now I will show you a superior way to live that is beyond comparison. So right in the middle of chapters 12 and 14 on public spiritual gifts is, yes, it's chapter 13, the love chapter. Love towards others is the superior way to live that is beyond comparison. What I'd like to do now is go through the key points in chapter 13, because they are, and remember our definition of love that we gave, they are points on demonstrated love and action. Here are the first two verses of chapter 13. If I were to speak with eloquence in hurt in earth's many languages and in the heavenly tongues of angels, yet I didn't express myself with love, my words would be reduced to the hollow sound of nothing more than a clanging cymbal. And if I were to have the gift of prophecy with a profound understanding of God's hidden secrets, and if I possessed unending supernatural knowledge, and if I had the greatest gift of faith that could move mountains, but have never learned to love, then I am nothing. Wow. Paul expresses himself here somewhat harshly, but you know, sometimes that's what it takes to get a point across. It's interesting the words Paul chose here, but have never learned to love. Love is a learned behavior, folks. As I mentioned before, a very interesting question asked by Jesus, by many people who stand before him is have you learned to love? Many Bible scholars feel that Paul had a near-death experience when he was stoned to death at Lystra. So it's possible he was asked that very question about whether he had learned to love, which would explain his wording used here in verse 2. For those who have not learned to love, they get a quick demonstration of what love looks like right there in heaven, because they feel the amazing love, acceptance, and forgiveness demonstrated by Father God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, regardless of any bad things these people have done. What a tremendous lesson given by the three members of the Godhead themselves. In verse 3, it says, And if I were to be so generous as to give away everything I owned to feed the poor, and to offer my body to be burned as a martyr without the pure motive of love, I would gain nothing of value. It's no wonder that demonstrated love is the superior way to exercise spiritual gifts, to treat people right, and to live your life in general. What follows next is a list of ten characteristics or attributes, if you will, of what demonstrated love looks like. First, Paul says love is incredibly patient. Not just patient, but incredibly patient. I know what some of you are thinking right now. You're thinking, wow, Paul, ten characteristics of love and you come right out of the box with that one first. How am I ever going to get to the rest? I know this is a tough one for many people. Do you find yourself becoming impatient with people? We must learn to love people. Therefore, we must learn to be patient. Incredibly patient with them. You know, I personally need to develop a system, which is something my dad taught me, to make things happen consistently. Somewhere between the trigger and our reaction to the trigger, we need to have a system. We need to figure out a way to choose our patience. So what does love look like? It bears with people patiently. Next, love is gentle and consistently kind. Encouragement comes into play when it comes to gentleness and kindness. One of the things I've tried to teach people is to have posted somewhere what I call go out the door scriptures. This means that when you're going out from your home into the world of people out there, you find ways, you remind yourself to encourage every single person you come in contact with. Besides demonstrating love for others, an added benefit of this is that it helps keep the heart and the mouth under control. You cannot say any offensive things to people if you're being kind and encouraging them gently. So what does love look like? It treats people with gentleness and kindness and encourages people. Next, love refuses to be jealous when blessing comes to someone else. This is a tough one sometimes because at times we're asking ourselves, why didn't I get that recognition? Why didn't I get that job? Why didn't I get a compliment there? Does anybody see me? Well, keeping in line with looking for people to encourage, that should be our goal. In other words, if blessing comes to someone else, we should congratulate them and encourage them with positive words and words of blessing. But this has to be heartfelt, or it'll feel fake to the other person. What does love look like? It blesses people when good things happen to them. Next, love doesn't brag about accomplishments or inflate one's own importance. Well, this one is kind of a given since these things have nothing to do with anyone but yourself. The first thing I that came to mind when I read this one is a rule that my wife and I have about striking up conversations with people. And that is we ask people questions about themselves to get them talking. And we continue to do that and not talk about ourselves until they ask us a question. Listen, most of you know that you can wear people out talking about yourself, bragging about your accomplishments, or inflating your own importance. What does love look like? It puts the interests of others ahead of your own and honors what other people accomplish. Next, love does not traffic in shame and disrespect or selfishly seek one's own honor. Do you remember the last time you were shamed or disrespected by someone? What did that feel like? Loving people means not making people feel that way. Because that is the opposite of encouragement. You're tearing them down, basically. And selfishly seeking one's own honor goes with the previous point about not bragging about accomplishments or inflating one's own importance. So what does love look like? Treating people with dignity and respect. Next How we doing out there? Okay, I'll forge on. Love is not easily irritated or quick to take offense. The first thing that came to my mind on this one was James one nineteen. My dearest brothers and sisters, take this to heart. Be quick to listen, but slow to speak, and be slow to become angry, for human anger is never a legitimate tool to promote God's righteous purpose. If you're talking with someone and they're not getting what you're saying, refrain from getting irritated. Just practice the first attribute of love. Be incredibly patient. That's what it's going to take for some people. On the issue of getting irritated, I have a confession to make. I can usually hold myself together for one bummer that happens. But if the bummers just keep coming, that's when I can blow my cork, mostly at myself, but occasionally at others within earshot. I'm working on that, okay? But closely, this is closely related to getting irritated. And it is that's the second half of this attribute. It's taking offense. You know, there are people out there, and you've probably met them, who delight in getting you to lose control because they delight in being in control over people. You gotta love them. Do you take offense easily? Imagine a cartoon in which someone has all their internal buttons on the outside of their clothes, right out there where people can push their buttons at will. You need to pack those buttons away safely inside and only let love be seen, putting the interests of others ahead of your own. That is what love looks like. There might be times when you have to say, Yeah, you're probably right about that, you know, when they've insulted you. Next, love joyfully celebrates honesty and finds no delight in what is wrong. Now, a moment ago, when I made my confession about multiple bummers setting me off, did you celebrate my honesty? Did you did you shout out, yes, that happens to me too? Well, there you go. The concept of honesty is an interesting one to me lately. Getting back to near-death experiencers, something God sometimes says to people in these experiences is, I am looking for an honest relationship with you. Wow, let that sink in for a minute. God says to you, I am looking for an honest relationship with you. I want an honest relationship with you. You know, lately I've gotten real honest with God about what I'm feeling before I start praying. And as a result, a palpable result, my conversations with him are getting deeper and richer. What does love look like? It's open, it's honest, and it moves away from the wrong and toward what is right. So it's not just God who's looking for those honest relationships, it's it's the people around you that you love. Next, love is a safe place of shelter for others because it never stops believing the best for others. What does this mean? It means people often come to you because they know what they're going to get from you love, acceptance, patience, encouragement, and perhaps a dose of wisdom. They know they're not going to get dressed down with criticism from you. Be someone who sees or struggles to see the image of God in people, no matter how small a part of them that is. Look for what for what reflects the image and personality of God in people and pump them up about that. Because that which gets rewarded gets repeated. Think about that one. What does love look like? It's being there for people when they need you. Next, love never takes failure as defeat, for it never gives up. Okay, the first thing that came to mind here is my wife. She is one of the most tenacious people I know. I would say the most tenacious, but I think our daughter is even more tenacious than she is. If I were giving this teaching in a live classroom, I would get my flip chart easel out and ask the class to give me ideas about what constitutes a failure. I think if I ask ten people this question, I just might get 10 different answers. What is failure to you? How do you respond to it? Do you give up, back away, or press onward? Whatever it is, Paul's context in this chapter is human relationships. It's loving your neighbor as yourself. So, with that understanding, what does failure look like? It's a failure or a breakdown in a relationship. And we could even flip chart that statement because there are many types of failure in a relationship. All that to say, if there is a breach in a relationship you have with someone, this verse is for you. Love never takes failure as defeat, for it never gives up. That is what love looks like. And finally, love never stops loving and outlives spiritual gifts. Love is forever. Spiritual gifts are not, meaning there will come a time when they won't be necessary anymore. But love goes on through eternity. In your relationships with people, never stop loving them. Demonstrated love. This is the second greatest commandment in action. Love your neighbor as yourself. That means to the degree you look after your own needs in life, you must love others to the same degree or more. I see it as a scale. For those who haven't learned to love, their side of the scale is loaded down with selfish desires and actions and words. But having learned to love others, our demonstrated acts of love should at least balance the scale, so at least half the time we're putting the interests of others ahead of our own. And I repeat, love is a learned behavior. The ten statements or the attributes of love that I went through don't come naturally or easily. You must learn these behaviors. And the best way to learn them is to practice them. Practice them on your family until they are a part of your life. Well, I have to say, I could go on and on on this topic, but I think I've made a case for love in action. And the world will be a better place for it. God bless you all.