SPEAKER_00: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_01: Morning.
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to our time to worship together this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Allison and I want to extend our thanks to you for your concern and especially your prayers for our family over the last couple of weeks.
SPEAKER_01: As Allison's dad was called home to begin eternity with Christ.
SPEAKER_01: As death always is, it's been a stressful time, but probably more than stressful, exhausting time.
SPEAKER_01: So continue to cover your prayers for recovery for those things.
SPEAKER_01: Just before we had to deal with a family death, another death occurred in Minneapolis that set the world on fire.
SPEAKER_01: Literally and figuratively.
SPEAKER_01: And of course, another death occurred here at home at the same time, resulting in an outpour of support and compassion.
SPEAKER_01: The taking of both of those lives and many others added grief upon grief to me personally.
SPEAKER_01: The first, George Floyd in Minneapolis, was senseless and brutish, and made me wonder, is that what's in store for my son?
SPEAKER_01: The second, Officer Holty, added grief because I thought, if those whose duty it is to keep us safe from senseless evil are not safe themselves from senseless evil, then who can ever be safe?
SPEAKER_01: My next breath was, even so come, Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: America's greatest theologian, George Jonathan Edwards, wrote in a letter dated 1743 that genuine revival in America would be accompanied by, and I quote, deep humiliation, brokenness of heart, poverty of spirit, mourning for sin, solemnity of spirit, a trembling reverence toward God, tenderness, and a readiness to esteem others better than oneself.
SPEAKER_01: As we've seen in our study of the Sermon on the Mount, those are characteristics of those who genuinely trust and follow the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Let's call the success of Satan what it really is.
SPEAKER_01: As Costi Hinn has written this week, quote, the term racism isn't enough.
SPEAKER_01: We need to start calling it what it is.
SPEAKER_01: Ethnic prejudice, ethnic hate, pure hate, evil sin.
SPEAKER_01: We can try behavior modification, but what we need is heart transformation.
SPEAKER_01: Of course, we can add any number of terms and sins to that list.
SPEAKER_01: Injustice, murder in the heart, hatred, anger, lust, a multitude of others.
SPEAKER_01: In the end, Costahin has said that only the gospel can bring about real transformation.
SPEAKER_01: And isn't that exactly what Jonathan Edwards was saying?
SPEAKER_01: Was that when the gospel truly impacts who we are, that begins to transform who we are.
SPEAKER_01: When the gospel brings regeneration, that recreating work of God, sinful thoughts, sinful feelings, and sinful actions, all works of the flesh in Galatians, are replaced by the fruit of the Spirit so that we can love God first and then love others as he has loved us.
SPEAKER_01: 1 John chapter 3, verse 16.
SPEAKER_01: You've probably heard it before.
SPEAKER_01: By this we know love.
SPEAKER_01: By this, this is this is how we know love.
SPEAKER_01: This is how we know how to love.
SPEAKER_01: That he laid down his life for us.
SPEAKER_01: There's no emotionalism there.
SPEAKER_01: There's no affection there.
SPEAKER_01: There's no description of intense, passionate feelings.
SPEAKER_01: There is only simple action.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus laying down his life for us.
SPEAKER_01: And the Apostle John says that is how we know how to relate to other people in love.
SPEAKER_01: I want us to love in the way that God expects.
SPEAKER_01: And I think we all need some reminders of what God has to say about love.
SPEAKER_01: We need it because it's too easy for us to get caught up in the world's expectations and standards.
SPEAKER_01: When we get caught up in what the world is throwing at us and telling us as to this is how you need to be, or this is what you need to feel, or this is how you need to act, what ends up happening is we bring our own sinfulness then with us into our love and into the church, and that is often worked out in our relationships, especially within the church, with detrimental effects.
SPEAKER_01: Because of that, we end up avoiding certain people.
SPEAKER_01: We end up avoiding certain people because they make us uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_01: We don't speak to some people because maybe we just simply don't like them.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe sometimes we're aware of the struggles in people's lives, and we're aware of how they're dealing for them, and we disagree with that, and so we judge them for it.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe they're just different.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe they're just not the same as us, and so we unconsciously set up barriers around us and between us.
SPEAKER_01: All of that derives from sin, from a worldly unbiblical view of love.
SPEAKER_01: And we need God's word to correct those views in us.
SPEAKER_01: We need a revival, according to Jonathan Edwards, a revival of genuine love.
SPEAKER_01: It's because of that that I want you to follow me this week and the next two Sundays in a walk through 1 Corinthians chapter 13.
SPEAKER_01: 1 Corinthians chapter 13 is often known as a wedding text.
SPEAKER_01: It is not a wedding text, it is a church text.
SPEAKER_01: It is a church text and a people text for people relationships in guiding us and instructing us in how we ought to relate to one another.
SPEAKER_01: So I encourage you to take your Bible, if you have one, and open it to that text or your device.
SPEAKER_01: And as you do that, I'm going to plug a book.
SPEAKER_01: This is a children's book.
SPEAKER_01: If you have children in your household, young children, or if you have grandchildren who are young, you need this book.
SPEAKER_01: It is entitled God's Very Good Idea.
SPEAKER_01: God's Very Good Idea.
SPEAKER_01: You must have this in your home.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't have children or you don't have grandchildren, that's okay.
SPEAKER_01: Buy it anyway and give it to somebody who does.
SPEAKER_01: It's that good.
SPEAKER_01: God's very good idea is that God created human beings and he created us all different and all the same.
SPEAKER_01: As you're turning, I would like to read a couple of pages.
SPEAKER_01: Because we have ruined.
SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't switch back for first service.
SPEAKER_01: My apologies.
SPEAKER_01: We live in God's world.
SPEAKER_01: We are all different, but we are also all the same.
SPEAKER_01: Everyone you see is different than you, and the same as you.
SPEAKER_01: They might look different or speak different or play different, but they are all made in God's image, and so they are all valuable.
SPEAKER_01: This is God's very good idea.
SPEAKER_01: But people ruined God's very good idea.
SPEAKER_01: The first people chose not to love God.
SPEAKER_01: This is called sin.
SPEAKER_01: And because they chose not to love God as they should, they forgot how to love each other as they should.
SPEAKER_01: We are the same.
SPEAKER_01: We choose not to love God, and so we are not able to love each other like we should.
SPEAKER_01: We sin.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we treat others badly because they are different than us.
SPEAKER_01: People fight with each other, people are mean to each other, people laugh at each other.
SPEAKER_01: Because we have ruined God's very good idea, he is not pleased with us.
SPEAKER_01: Our sin means we can't be friends with him or enjoy living with him.
SPEAKER_01: We need God's forgiveness for ruining his very good idea.
SPEAKER_01: And it's the same for everyone in the world.
SPEAKER_01: It's just a glimpse of this book.
SPEAKER_01: Again, God's very good idea.
SPEAKER_01: I could read the entire book and close it up and sit down and be done.
SPEAKER_01: It's in essence an exposition of 1 Corinthians 13 for children.
SPEAKER_01: Before we dive into 1 Corinthians 13, we need some background before we get there.
SPEAKER_01: We need to understand a little bit about what's going on here to properly understand it, and that background must start at the theological beginning of love, at the foundational starting point of love.
SPEAKER_01: So when you think about love, loving other people, loving one another, what do you think is the very beginning of love?
SPEAKER_01: Where does it start?
SPEAKER_01: If you're a Christian, it starts in 1 John chapter 4 and verse 8, where we read three very important words.
SPEAKER_01: God is love.
SPEAKER_01: God says he is love.
SPEAKER_01: So at its most basic point, love is not an emotion, love is not an affection, love is a person.
SPEAKER_01: God is love.
SPEAKER_01: Love defines God.
SPEAKER_01: God defines love.
SPEAKER_01: It is who he is.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, any description, any definition of love must include the person of God.
SPEAKER_01: But that's incomplete.
SPEAKER_01: Knowing that God is love does not fill out our understanding of love.
SPEAKER_01: He's shown us, though in his word, what he is, that is, what his love is like.
SPEAKER_01: And so we begin to see a little bit more of what love is.
SPEAKER_01: I already mentioned 1 John 3.16.
SPEAKER_01: By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us.
SPEAKER_01: Or a chapter later in 1 John chapter 4 and verse 10.
SPEAKER_01: In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and gave his son to be the propitiation, the satisfaction for our sins.
SPEAKER_01: There's more.
SPEAKER_01: Ephesians chapter 5, verse 2.
SPEAKER_01: Walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us.
SPEAKER_01: 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 12, 14.
SPEAKER_01: For the love of Christ controls us because we have concluded this, that one has died for all.
SPEAKER_01: Romans 5.8.
SPEAKER_01: God shows his love for us.
SPEAKER_01: And that while we were in the act of sinning against him, Christ died for us.
SPEAKER_01: In Scripture, we discover that God's love is active.
SPEAKER_01: That is, it's not based in his feelings, but in what he does.
SPEAKER_01: It's not founded in his association with someone that he's affectionate towards or that he likes, but it's based in his giving of himself.
SPEAKER_01: That kind of love is not self-centered, but focused on others to the extent that he would give himself, he would give all of himself to cover the very worst part of those whom he loved.
SPEAKER_01: God gave himself to cover the worst things about you.
SPEAKER_01: That is love.
SPEAKER_01: That is the character of God.
SPEAKER_01: As human beings, we experience the jittery, warm affection of emotional love, but that's not true love.
SPEAKER_01: Understand that if and when you feel that emotion, it is not love as God loves.
SPEAKER_01: It's not love as God defines Himself.
SPEAKER_01: That is emotion, not love.
SPEAKER_01: Love is active, love is selfless.
SPEAKER_01: Love is focused on others, considering them more significant than yourself.
SPEAKER_01: That is the character of God.
SPEAKER_01: And that is essential to understand when we come to 1 Corinthians 13.
SPEAKER_01: It's important because the people in the church at Corinth did not love that way.
SPEAKER_01: They were more focused on themselves than they were on others.
SPEAKER_01: They were more attentive to building themselves up and protecting what they had accomplished rather than considering others as more significant.
SPEAKER_01: Their love was so self-focused that they believed, imagine this, they believed that it was more important to tolerate open sin in the church while putting down other classes of people.
SPEAKER_01: Their love was active, it was selfishly active.
SPEAKER_01: They were not demonstrating the love of God toward one another.
SPEAKER_01: And so that became a problem as they worked out life in the church, specifically through the gifts that God's Spirit gives to do that.
SPEAKER_01: As God gave them special areas of service or special uniquely spirit-empowered abilities, they weren't used with the intent to build one another up, to encourage one another, and to fulfill the work of the ministry in love.
SPEAKER_01: They were used instead for selfish, self-centered reasons.
SPEAKER_01: Spiritual gifts given to God's people became opportunities for them to say, Hey, look at me.
SPEAKER_01: Now get out of my way.
SPEAKER_01: So for that reason, the Apostle Paul spent three chapters on the application of spiritual gifts.
SPEAKER_01: And in the middle, in the middle of those three chapters, he tells us here is how God intends for you to interact with other people.
SPEAKER_01: Here's how God intends for you to love other people.
SPEAKER_01: Notice his statement at the very end of chapter 12 in chapter 12, verse 31.
SPEAKER_01: This function is like the lead in a newspaper article saying, I will show you a more excellent way.
SPEAKER_01: I will show you a more excellent way.
SPEAKER_01: The greatest means of service to the Lord and to one another is through love.
SPEAKER_01: Now we're all familiar with verses 4, 5, 6, 7, maybe to verse 8.
SPEAKER_01: The love is portion.
SPEAKER_01: Here's how love is described.
SPEAKER_01: But we can't skip over the first three verses.
SPEAKER_01: They're foundational.
SPEAKER_01: It's in those three verses that the Apostle Paul describes for us the kind of love that we are to have.
SPEAKER_01: Love that has as its basis that self-giving love of God, that self-sacrificing active love.
SPEAKER_01: And so to this unloving group of people in ancient Corinth, the Apostle Paul details the importance of love in the life of a believer in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And the way he does that is with comparisons to three different areas of Christian life.
SPEAKER_01: You can see those in your Bible by the if statements.
SPEAKER_01: There are three consecutive if statements.
SPEAKER_01: If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I'm a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
SPEAKER_01: If I have prophetic powers and can understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
SPEAKER_01: If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
SPEAKER_01: We have three hypotheticals here of the Apostle Paul's own life that are most likely intended to be exaggerations to prove a point.
SPEAKER_01: And this is a little different than the surrounding context.
SPEAKER_01: If you look back at chapter 12 and verse 27, it says, Now you are the body of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: For most of this book, he's been talking to the whole church gathered together, and he's not pulled any punches.
SPEAKER_01: It's been one left-hand punch after a right-hand punch, one after another after another.
SPEAKER_01: But now he pauses and he says, Listen, I'm preaching to myself too.
SPEAKER_01: He says, I'm here.
SPEAKER_01: I'm an apostle, and even though I'm an apostle, I'm still required to be obedient just as everyone else is.
SPEAKER_01: If Paul were to serve without love, then he would be in the wrong.
SPEAKER_01: Just as all the Christians would be disobedient if they failed to be loving.
SPEAKER_01: Look at what he says in verse 1.
SPEAKER_01: If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I'm a noisy gong or clanging cymbal.
SPEAKER_01: The church in Corinth had elevated the spiritual gift of tongues and prophecy above all other spiritual gifts.
SPEAKER_01: So they thought that those particular gifts demonstrated a special spiritual ability and connection with God that separated them from other people.
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 12, the Apostle Paul addresses those unique gifts last.
SPEAKER_01: Sort of his way of saying, You think those are so important?
SPEAKER_01: Let me show you how unimportant they are.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to deal with them last.
SPEAKER_01: Now he flips the script, and in chapter 13, he's dealing with them first.
SPEAKER_01: He highlights them to help these people know that any kind of speech without love is merely incoherent noise.
SPEAKER_01: It's just noise.
SPEAKER_01: All the Corinthians wanted the spiritual gift of tongues.
SPEAKER_01: It was a way to signal that you'd arrived, spiritually speaking.
SPEAKER_01: So if you spoke in tongues, it gave you a leg up on everybody else.
SPEAKER_01: So the greatest hypothetical demonstration of speaking in tongues, then, if you had the greatest gift of speaking in tongues, it would be to be able to speak in all the languages of humanity, so that no matter where you went in the world, no matter who you encountered on the streets, whether they were from one of the other five continents on the earth, you could speak their language.
SPEAKER_01: That would be the greatest demonstration of the gift of tongues.
SPEAKER_01: That's all exaggeration to prove a point.
SPEAKER_01: You can imagine it this way.
SPEAKER_01: Imagine the Apostle Paul standing up and saying, Let's suppose that I had the greatest ability to speak in tongues.
SPEAKER_01: So that I could literally actually speak in every human language and even communicate with angels.
SPEAKER_01: I can't, that's not what the gift of tongues is about, but let's imagine for a moment that I could.
SPEAKER_01: That kind of amazing, impossi humanly impossible ability, if actually possible, done without love, is not beneficial.
SPEAKER_01: It's incoherent noise.
SPEAKER_01: A noisy gong was not anything like what we imagine when we imagine a gong.
SPEAKER_01: If you go down to Mongolian grill Whohat and you go through the line and they encourage you to hit the gong if you give them a tip.
SPEAKER_01: First Service seemed to understand that illustration.
SPEAKER_01: Have you guys not been to Hu-Hot?
SPEAKER_01: Okay, thank you.
SPEAKER_01: That's not the kind of gong that Paul's likely referring to.
SPEAKER_01: This would have been a brass vase-like vessel that would have been strategically positioned in amphitheaters or in the courtyards of temples that would reverberate sound in order in an effort to amplify it.
SPEAKER_01: We all know what symbols are.
SPEAKER_01: They have a purpose too, if used properly.
SPEAKER_01: They're even found in Old Testament temple worship.
SPEAKER_01: But if you just beat on a symbol, you clang it together with something else, with no pattern, with no beat, with no established music along with it, it's just noise.
SPEAKER_01: It's not helpful or beneficial.
SPEAKER_01: For a period of time, I had my office, not here in another church building, on the main floor of the church.
SPEAKER_01: And for a time, a music instructor was giving music lessons and band lessons to homeschool students right underneath me.
SPEAKER_01: And these were mostly beginning students.
SPEAKER_01: There was a lot of noise.
SPEAKER_01: It was not beneficial to my studying and preparation.
SPEAKER_01: The same is true of our speech.
SPEAKER_01: Specifically, the context here is talking about the spiritual gift of tongues, that spirit-given ability to speak in a different human language.
SPEAKER_01: But as the context to follow will demonstrate, and the rest of Scripture corroborates, it's important to apply all of this to all of our speech.
SPEAKER_01: Love is so important, so imperative, that our God-given ability to communicate with one another is just incoherent babbling if we speak without love.
SPEAKER_01: Our communication is just noise.
SPEAKER_01: If we speak in any way without love.
SPEAKER_01: Imagine the Apostle Paul, that giant of the faith, speaking to us and saying, You tell me, if I'm going to speak to you in the most magnificent of ways, if I use the greatest speech patterns and eloquent style and a variety of vocabulary so that you're drawn into what I'm saying, but you can tell that I'm just doing it to make myself look good.
SPEAKER_01: Will you listen to me?
SPEAKER_01: No, you're gonna turn me off.
SPEAKER_01: Let's turn that around for a minute.
SPEAKER_01: Let's flip it over.
SPEAKER_01: Current events, if you're paying attention, are showing us the need to listen, to really listen to those whose lives and experiences are not like ours.
SPEAKER_01: But if you listen without loving that person whose life is not like yours, is genuine communication really taking place?
SPEAKER_01: The implied truth here in 1 Corinthians 13 is not so much in the use of God's enablement to speak other languages, but in our communication with other people.
SPEAKER_01: When you share the gospel with someone, when you speak of Jesus, do the people that you're speaking with know that you're doing that because you love them?
SPEAKER_01: Or are you irritating them?
SPEAKER_01: When you communicate with your spouse, with your roommate, your parents, your neighbors, your friends, are you communicating in a way that expresses your love and care for them?
SPEAKER_01: Most difficult for me when I'm standing in a line or traffic is slow and I'm impatient.
SPEAKER_01: Do I communicate love?
SPEAKER_01: When we speak with those who don't look like us, don't sound like us, don't live like us, or each other, even in the in the body of Christ, when we gather together.
SPEAKER_01: Do we speak to one another?
SPEAKER_01: Do we relate to one another?
SPEAKER_01: Do we communicate with or without love?
SPEAKER_01: Are we are we communicating truly, or are we just babbling and making incoherent noise?
SPEAKER_01: Church Father Augustine said, If you are silent, be silent out of love.
SPEAKER_01: If you speak, speak out of love.
SPEAKER_01: Second comparison is in verse two.
SPEAKER_01: And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
SPEAKER_01: Here the Apostle Paul addresses three more spiritual gifts that these Corinthian believers had elevated to an improper place.
SPEAKER_01: They had turned the gifts of prophecy and knowledge and faith into self-centered actions of personal gratification.
SPEAKER_01: And they all fit, all three of them fit into the realm of spirituality.
SPEAKER_01: So if you claim to be religious, if you have a spirituality, but you have that without love, then your spirituality is meaningless.
SPEAKER_01: These were three areas of spiritual enablement given to God's people to begin the time of the church.
SPEAKER_01: So God gave prophets and prophets or prophetic powers, your translation may say, doesn't simply refer to predicting the future, saying what's going to happen in the future.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, if you look over at chapter 14 and the first three verses, you'll find that the gift of prophecy is proclaiming the Word of God in such a way that the church is built up, that it is encouraged and edified.
SPEAKER_01: Old Testament prophets were God's spokesmen.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes they declared the future, sometimes they just proclaimed what God said.
SPEAKER_01: Understanding mysteries is a related gift.
SPEAKER_01: But in the Bible, a mystery is something very specific.
SPEAKER_01: It refers to truth, to something that God had kept hidden, had kept for himself for a long time.
SPEAKER_01: But now he's revealed the mystery, and so human beings know about it.
SPEAKER_01: God revealed truths that he had previously kept hidden from mankind, and he had determined the proper time and the proper place in the proper way to reveal those truths.
SPEAKER_01: Knowledge goes back to chapter 12 and verse 8, where the Spirit gives the utterance of knowledge, empowering someone to speak in a newly revealed way of God and his word.
SPEAKER_01: And apparently the church in Corinth were taking these gifts of the God's Spirit to an extreme and using them in a way to elevate themselves and undermine those who didn't have these abilities.
SPEAKER_01: So the Apostle Paul uses this picture in an extreme way to illustrate himself.
SPEAKER_01: He says, I'm an apostle.
SPEAKER_01: I've been become a steward of the mysteries of God.
SPEAKER_01: He wrote so much of our New Testament.
SPEAKER_01: He said, Even if I am to have all knowledge, if I have all understanding of all mysteries, if I have the greatest faith, so that there is nothing that stands in the way of my faith, if I have all of that, but I don't have love, my spirituality is worthless.
SPEAKER_01: It has no meaning.
SPEAKER_01: Zero.
SPEAKER_01: But notice how he said it.
SPEAKER_01: He says, I am nothing.
SPEAKER_01: He says, if I can do all of this in the realm of my spirituality without love, it means nothing to me, and I am nothing.
SPEAKER_01: If we have the greatest ability, the greatest spirituality, if we demonstrate the power of God working through us, but we don't have love, then we as individuals are nothing.
SPEAKER_01: We amount to nothing.
SPEAKER_01: We cannot claim to be anything or anyone special, meaningless.
SPEAKER_01: If you and I as Christians do not live with love, we are stripped of everything.
SPEAKER_01: We are nothing.
SPEAKER_01: And we can't think of ourselves as being of anything.
SPEAKER_01: Now in verse 3, we are told that sacrifice without love is also useless.
SPEAKER_01: If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but I don't have love, I gain nothing.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we will make sacrifices in life, right?
SPEAKER_01: When we make sacrifices for something, we usually do it in anticipation of getting something in return.
SPEAKER_01: The Apostle Paul paints two pictures here, both of which refer to great personal sacrifice.
SPEAKER_01: The first, he says, is if I give away all I have.
SPEAKER_01: That's not necessarily a statement about all of his possessions, you know, giving it all up or selling it all, getting rid of it all, although that may be included.
SPEAKER_01: The particular element that's being referred to here is of feeding hungry people.
SPEAKER_01: It's a picture of giving out food so that people can be filled.
SPEAKER_01: And this happened in the early church.
SPEAKER_01: They made sure that everybody in the church had food, even if they had to sacrifice something themselves to provide for others.
SPEAKER_01: Did you know that there are historical records?
SPEAKER_01: There are historical records of Christians selling themselves into slavery and giving the money from the proceeds of selling themselves so that poorer Christians could eat.
SPEAKER_01: And we think we have problems.
SPEAKER_01: We think we lack.
SPEAKER_01: So the Apostle Paul is projecting this image of giving away all that he can possibly give to feed the poor in the church.
SPEAKER_01: But if that if that sacrifice is done out of compulsion, out of pride, out of getting something in return, out of some kind of wrong motive, if it's done without motive, I'm sorry, if it's done without love, it is a useless sacrifice.
SPEAKER_01: The second image is a more difficult one.
SPEAKER_01: Because there's a textual issue here with this statement.
SPEAKER_01: Some Bibles will translate it to be burned, and others might have that I may boast.
SPEAKER_01: Quite a difference there.
SPEAKER_01: In my opinion, the majority of scholars are correct in thinking that the most likely reading is to be burned.
SPEAKER_01: But if that's the case, then we still have to figure out what it means.
SPEAKER_01: What is he talking about?
SPEAKER_01: Because at the time that the Apostle Paul wrote this letter, the Romans didn't use burning as a way to persecute Christians.
SPEAKER_01: They used other ways.
SPEAKER_01: So it's probably also not referring to self-immolation.
SPEAKER_01: You know, you've probably seen that famous photo from many years ago of a monk dousing himself with gasoline and setting himself on fire.
SPEAKER_01: We have no historical records of Christians doing that in the first century, so it's likely not that.
SPEAKER_01: No, I think that this is connected with the previous statement.
SPEAKER_01: I think they go together in this single if statement.
SPEAKER_01: I think the burning is what happened when Christians sold themselves into slavery to provide food for others.
SPEAKER_01: Because when they sold themselves, they would be branded with a hot iron, burning a mark into their flesh.
SPEAKER_01: And we have historical records that that happened among the early church.
SPEAKER_01: I think what the Apostle Paul is saying is if I give up my own life, selling myself into slavery to get some money so that somebody else can eat, so that I take a burned mark in my flesh.
SPEAKER_01: Because if I go to that extent of a sacrifice and I do it without love, I gain nothing.
SPEAKER_01: I think these images are purposefully extreme.
SPEAKER_01: Did they happen?
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
SPEAKER_01: Did they happen regularly?
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: They're hyperbole to prove a point.
SPEAKER_01: And the point is this: no matter what we do, if we're to go to the extreme form of sacrifice for the benefit of others, we gain nothing if it's done without love.
SPEAKER_01: It would be useless.
SPEAKER_01: It's a waste of time, it's a waste of energy, it's a waste of resources, etc.
SPEAKER_01: And no one wants to be ignored.
SPEAKER_01: No one wants to work hard or to sacrifice of themselves or their resources or to have great abilities that don't get recognized.
SPEAKER_01: We don't want who we are and what we've done and everything about us to become worthless or pointless or without value.
SPEAKER_01: But that is exactly the way it is if we do not live with the kind of love that God expects.
SPEAKER_01: If we do not have the love of Christ, that self-sacrificial, other-centered love in all that we do, we're simply doing what I hate to do.
SPEAKER_01: Run on the treadmill.
SPEAKER_01: I'm doing something, but I'm not going anywhere.
SPEAKER_01: We're exerting energy.
SPEAKER_01: We're spending resources, but we're not going anywhere.
SPEAKER_01: Now we ought to know, as God's people, we ought to know from Matthew 22, verse 37, that love is extremely important in our relationships.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus was asked a question: What's the greatest commandment?
SPEAKER_01: Out of all the commandments of God, what's the greatest commandment?
SPEAKER_01: And you know what he said.
SPEAKER_01: You will love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.
SPEAKER_01: And don't forget the second greatest commandment, because it's like it.
SPEAKER_01: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
SPEAKER_01: It seems to me that we need a Jonathan Edwards kind of revival.
SPEAKER_01: Now maybe you feel convicted as I have been.
SPEAKER_01: Or maybe you you have a sense of guilt after hearing this.
SPEAKER_01: Good.
SPEAKER_01: That is good.
SPEAKER_01: But don't let that move you to give up.
SPEAKER_01: To just throw your hands in the air and say, oh, it's beyond me.
SPEAKER_01: I can't I can't love that way.
SPEAKER_01: No, don't do that.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, confess that inability and pursue Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Pursue Jesus so that you seek to know him more, so that you seek to understand why he laid down his life for you, so that you seek to know what motivated him to go to that cross and to seek that with joy, so that he might cover the worst parts of you.
SPEAKER_01: Seek him, pursue him.
SPEAKER_01: Let that motivate you to love him more.
SPEAKER_01: And that love will then begin to pour out of you toward others as a fruit of the Spirit's work in you.
SPEAKER_01: That all comes from the person of God because God is love.
SPEAKER_01: That is his character.
SPEAKER_01: It is based on his actions and giving up his son for us.
SPEAKER_01: We must see that importance and not simply see it, but begin to believe it.
SPEAKER_01: And by his grace and the power that is at work within us to love our God, we will begin to love one another and to love our neighbors, even the unlovely ones.
SPEAKER_01: Now, by his grace, the Lord has himself shown us his character.
SPEAKER_01: Our Father has shown us what he is like and the giving of himself.
SPEAKER_01: Next time we'll gather together to begin to see what that love looks like in action.
SPEAKER_01: I'd like you to commit with me to make it a matter of prayer this week that the Spirit of God would cause the love of God to be displayed in us toward others.
SPEAKER_01: Lord Jesus, we come and we bow before you.
SPEAKER_01: And we confess to you that we have failed.
SPEAKER_01: We have failed to love as you have loved us.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, we're not much different than the Corinthians.
SPEAKER_01: We struggle with all kinds of inherent difficulties.
SPEAKER_01: There are parts of our flesh that rise up and want to rule in us and want to make us be thrust into the forefront so that we get attention, so that we get the benefit.
SPEAKER_01: We are so self-focused.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, forgive us of our sin.
SPEAKER_01: Draw us closer to yourself and renew us.
SPEAKER_01: Renew us by your spirit so that we might have a love that is that is willing to sacrifice for the benefit of others.
SPEAKER_01: Lord Jesus, sometimes it feels like we just can't do this.
SPEAKER_01: It's too hard.
SPEAKER_01: So help us.
SPEAKER_01: You've promised that you would give us your spirit.
SPEAKER_01: You've promised that your spirit would enable us to fulfill your commands.
SPEAKER_01: Your spirit is given to us to enable us and to empower us to love the way you have loved us.
SPEAKER_01: So until you come again to rescue us and to rescue your world, enable us to see that we need to walk with you.
SPEAKER_01: Because it's as we walk with you that you work in and through us to show your love to a needing world.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_00: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.