SPEAKER_00: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_01: Glad to have you here as we pick up where we left off last week in our study of 1 Corinthians chapter 13.
SPEAKER_01: As we begin to consider how the love of God is to be displayed in the lives of his people.
SPEAKER_01: And as you are turning there to 1 Corinthians 13 in your Bible, I would like to note for a few moments of introduction a list of troubling words found in 2 Timothy chapter 3.
SPEAKER_01: Here's how the Apostle Paul began that chapter.
SPEAKER_01: He said, But understand this that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.
SPEAKER_01: For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness but denying its power.
SPEAKER_01: It's a troubling list of words.
SPEAKER_01: It begins with two groups of people, those who are lovers of self and lovers of money.
SPEAKER_01: And it concludes with two different groups as well: lovers of pleasure and those who love God.
SPEAKER_01: Author Brian Payne writes, this list begins and ends with words expressing misdirected love.
SPEAKER_01: This suggests that what is centrally wrong with the human condition is that our love is misdirected and that all other vices flow from this misdirected love.
SPEAKER_01: Every human evil, from murder to lust, raping, and pillaging to coveting or racism or hate or injustice or any other sin, are symptoms of the problem.
SPEAKER_01: The core problem is found in our love.
SPEAKER_01: Our love for God and our love for our neighbors.
SPEAKER_01: You remember what Jesus said when asked, what is the greatest commandment?
SPEAKER_01: He said, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and your strength.
SPEAKER_01: And don't forget the second greatest commandment.
SPEAKER_01: You will love your neighbor as yourself.
SPEAKER_01: Those are commandments.
SPEAKER_01: They are not suggestions or recommendations.
SPEAKER_01: They're not optional.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, to not love God and to not love our neighbors means we are sinning.
SPEAKER_01: Period.
SPEAKER_01: And who is our neighbor?
SPEAKER_01: Who is our neighbor?
SPEAKER_01: In the story of the Good Samaritan, you might remember, we are told that the person who is our neighbor is the one whom we have every sinful reason to dislike and to avoid helping.
SPEAKER_01: You remember there was an injured man lying on the ground.
SPEAKER_01: And several groups of people walked by him, having the opportunity to help him, and in their sinfulness, they just avoided him.
SPEAKER_01: For one reason or another.
SPEAKER_01: In our present times of racism being front and center in our world, that becomes very striking.
SPEAKER_01: As are the descriptions of love in 1 Corinthians chapter 13.
SPEAKER_01: If you have your Bible, I encourage you to look there.
SPEAKER_01: If you have a device, you can use that as well.
SPEAKER_01: I'd like to begin reading in verse 1 so we get a little bit of the context here.
SPEAKER_01: You will remember from last time, the Apostle Paul is in the midst of a three-chapter section on spiritual gifts and how those are to function in the local church.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, I'm going to show you, though, a more excellent way to serve one another.
SPEAKER_01: He says, If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clinging symbol.
SPEAKER_01: If I have prophetic powers and 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: Love is patient and kind.
SPEAKER_01: Love does not envy or boast.
SPEAKER_01: It is not arrogant or rude.
SPEAKER_01: It does not insist on its own way.
SPEAKER_01: It is not irritable or resentful.
SPEAKER_01: It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
SPEAKER_01: Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
SPEAKER_01: Love never ends.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: In verses four through eight, there, there are sixteen characteristics of love.
SPEAKER_01: Each individual characteristic could be a sermon in and of itself, but I won't put you through that.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to try to get through verses four and five this morning, considering how we are to love the way God loves.
SPEAKER_01: And it begins by understanding that verse 4 and verse 5 especially don't simply describe love.
SPEAKER_01: They tell us what to do.
SPEAKER_01: They tell us actions.
SPEAKER_01: They describe what love does, how it's lived out towards others.
SPEAKER_01: Now it begins here in verse 4 with love is patient.
SPEAKER_01: Love is patient.
SPEAKER_01: And I don't think that that's necessarily an inaccurate translation, but we need to emphasize a little bit here for our purposes this morning that these are actions.
SPEAKER_01: So I want to put a word in there to help us recognize that this is something that we are to do.
SPEAKER_01: So we will begin then with love acts patiently.
SPEAKER_01: When we display the love of God towards others, it is displayed in such a way that it acts towards others in a patient way.
SPEAKER_01: There are two primary New Testament words for patience.
SPEAKER_01: One of them is connected mostly with patience in circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: I apply it mostly in my life to driving.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, I struggle with that, as you can tell.
SPEAKER_01: I need patience in those circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: That is not the one used here.
SPEAKER_01: The one used here is a word that is most often applied to patience related to people in our relationships with other people.
SPEAKER_01: So for example, we have in 1 Timothy 1, verse 16, the Apostle Paul saying, I received mercy for this reason, that in me as the foremost Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience, as an example to those who were to believe in him.
SPEAKER_01: Or 2 Peter 3, verse 9.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord is slow to fulfill his promise, is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness.
SPEAKER_01: But he is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
SPEAKER_01: You can see from those two passages, God's patience is seen most clearly in his slowness to respond in judgment to sin.
SPEAKER_01: He holds back, it's as if he's holding himself back from a quick and hasty and angry judgment.
SPEAKER_01: God is patient with your sin.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus showed us that patience in the parable recorded in Mark chapter or Matthew chapter 18, beginning around verse 24, 25, 26.
SPEAKER_01: You might remember it.
SPEAKER_01: It's the parable of a servant who owed 10,000 talents.
SPEAKER_01: Now that that needs some translation into our modern world because a talent was actually a weight.
SPEAKER_01: It was about roughly 70 pounds of coins, of either silver coins or gold coins, something like that.
SPEAKER_01: That was a monetary unit.
SPEAKER_01: And when you think about 10,000 talents, you can't think in terms of$10,000 because Jesus meant something much more hideous than that.
SPEAKER_01: Here was a man who owed a debt.
SPEAKER_01: And the debt, if we were to put it in today's terms, let's just say it's it's it's gold talents.
SPEAKER_01: He would owe in approximately$1 billion with a B.
SPEAKER_01: Imagine having that debt on your account, that you owed somebody else one billion dollars.
SPEAKER_01: See, a single talent in Scripture was about what a common laborer could earn in 20 years of working.
SPEAKER_01: 20 years of working would get you one talent times 10,000.
SPEAKER_01: Man's debt was more than the average laborer could earn in 200,000 years of working.
SPEAKER_01: It's an outrageous sum.
SPEAKER_01: The number was purposely inflated to highlight the grace of God.
SPEAKER_01: The number reflects the debt that we owe to God.
SPEAKER_01: It's so outrageous, so hideous that we could never come close to making even the tiniest of dents in paying God for our debt.
SPEAKER_01: And so the servant in the parable says to his master, have patience with me, and I will pay everything.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_01: Even if you earned$100,000 a year, you couldn't ever pay back the debt.
SPEAKER_01: It's impossible.
SPEAKER_01: It's out of the question.
SPEAKER_01: And then the parable says that the master let him go and fully forgave the man's debt.
SPEAKER_01: He erased it.
SPEAKER_01: That picture is God's patient forgiveness towards those who've come to him.
SPEAKER_01: We come to God with a debt of sin that is beyond comprehension.
SPEAKER_01: No amount of working could ever pay it off.
SPEAKER_01: We come spiritually bankrupt, and God is patient with us and forgives our sin debt by wiping it out.
SPEAKER_01: It's gone.
SPEAKER_01: Now the second half of that parable is where it really gets to be applied to us.
SPEAKER_01: That same servant had a fellow servant who owed him.
SPEAKER_01: And in the parable in the story, it says that that servant owed the guy a hundred denarii.
SPEAKER_01: Now, one dinari was about a day's wages.
SPEAKER_01: So he owed him just a little over what you could earn in three months.
SPEAKER_01: About a hundred days' wages.
SPEAKER_01: Now that's that's still a lot.
SPEAKER_01: We don't relish having a debt that would take us all of our income for over three months to pay off.
SPEAKER_01: But it's piddly compared to one billion dollars of debt, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: And what happened in the parable?
SPEAKER_01: The guy that was forgiven for the large debt went to the guy that was forgiven the small debt and said, Pay me now.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew 18, 29, we read, So his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, have patience with me, and I will pay you.
SPEAKER_01: What happened?
SPEAKER_01: He refused.
SPEAKER_01: He refused to be patient, and he put the fellow servant in prison until he paid it.
SPEAKER_01: And when the master heard that, he threw the first guy in prison until he paid the entire$1 billion debt, which means he would never get out.
SPEAKER_01: He would die in prison.
SPEAKER_01: Now here's the point.
SPEAKER_01: To fail, to show patience to others when we have experienced the patience of God with our sin is to bring judgment on ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: God has been so patient with you.
SPEAKER_01: He's been so patient with me.
SPEAKER_01: How can we not be patient with one another?
SPEAKER_01: Do you love in that way?
SPEAKER_01: Because that's the way your Father in heaven loves.
SPEAKER_01: The next action is linked with patience, and that is that love acts with kindness.
SPEAKER_01: Love is patient and kind.
SPEAKER_01: So again, we're talking about actions here, about verbs, putting these things into life, and so love acts in a kind way.
SPEAKER_01: It's ready to do good even to those who are our enemies.
SPEAKER_01: According to Romans chapter 2 and verse 4, patience and kindness are linked together as characteristics of God that lead us to repentance.
SPEAKER_01: So understand that.
SPEAKER_01: These are the first two characteristics of love mentioned by the Apostle Paul.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, your love is to be such that people see your patience and they experience your kindness and they want to come to your God because of it.
SPEAKER_01: That's convicting, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: It's an attitude and a way of acting toward others with grace.
SPEAKER_01: It's being warm and generous, thoughtful, kind, compassionate, helpful.
SPEAKER_01: Those who love with kindness recognize that everyone struggles.
SPEAKER_01: Everyone here this morning has some burden to bear.
SPEAKER_01: And that recognition enables us to be gracious and patient with one another, treating one another with the kindness that God has shown us.
SPEAKER_01: I love the way that the early church thought about this.
SPEAKER_01: Actually, not so much the early church, but the way the unbelieving world perceived Christians.
SPEAKER_01: Tertullian was a Christian writer who lived roughly 150 to 225 A.D.
SPEAKER_01: And he wrote in Latin.
SPEAKER_01: He wrote a lot.
SPEAKER_01: One of the things he wrote was that the kindness of Christians at the time so surprised the unbelieving world that they were given a nickname, a moniker, if you will.
SPEAKER_01: It was called Crestiani.
SPEAKER_01: C-H-R-E-S-T.
SPEAKER_01: Crestiani.
SPEAKER_01: Which in Latin means it's a word made up of, meaning made up of kindness, that these people are built out of kindness.
SPEAKER_01: And it was a play on words for the normal term applied to Christians, Christiani.
SPEAKER_01: How appropriate that Christiani are supposed to be Christiani.
SPEAKER_01: You can see then how patience goes hand in hand with kindness.
SPEAKER_01: If we are not patient, we're not going to act in a kind way.
SPEAKER_01: At least that's the way it is with me.
SPEAKER_01: If I am impatient, I'm not real likely to be kind with you.
SPEAKER_01: But if we have a love that is kind, we're going to lean towards patience with one another.
SPEAKER_01: And God says, My love is to be patient and to do good toward all, and that is how my children are to be.
SPEAKER_01: Now, from here, this list of actions shifts from the positive to the negative.
SPEAKER_01: He's told us this is what love does.
SPEAKER_01: Now, here is what love does not do.
SPEAKER_01: Love does not envy or boast.
SPEAKER_01: Let's deal with the first one: envy.
SPEAKER_01: Love does not act with jealousy.
SPEAKER_01: Now, jealousy means to have some intense emotional feelings over someone else's success.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes this word is used in ancient literature in a way that pictures burning or boiling with emotion.
SPEAKER_01: See, acting with jealousy means we don't see others as more significant or important or worthwhile.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, we may want to harm them or desire for harm to come to them.
SPEAKER_01: Jealousy seeks for personal advancement instead of the good of others.
SPEAKER_01: There's some biblical examples for this.
SPEAKER_01: You remember Joseph, the end of Genesis?
SPEAKER_01: Joseph was his dad's favorite son, and all the other brothers were jealous of him, so they sold him into slavery.
SPEAKER_01: Acts chapter 7, verse 9 describes that jealousy.
SPEAKER_01: James 4, 2 says, You desire.
SPEAKER_01: You're jealous, and you do not have, so you murder.
SPEAKER_01: You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.
SPEAKER_01: It's a major problem in the church at Corinth.
SPEAKER_01: Back in chapter 3, the Apostle Paul said to them, You are still in the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?
SPEAKER_01: He says, Listen, if you're jealous of one another, you're not displaying yourselves as sons of God, you're displaying yourselves as sinful human beings.
SPEAKER_01: That's why jealousy is included in Galatians 5 as a work of the flesh, not a work, not a fruit of the spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Jealousy is something that comes out of us naturally.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, it's to be squashed.
SPEAKER_01: Genuine, spirit-empowered love does not allow those intense feelings any room to germinate, any room to grow or to find expression in life.
SPEAKER_01: We love properly when we squelch jealousy in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: Loving properly means giving thanks to God for his grace and provision to someone else.
SPEAKER_01: When was the last time you did that?
SPEAKER_01: That you saw God being gracious and providing for somebody else, and you praised God for providing for them instead of yourself.
SPEAKER_01: That's what love does.
SPEAKER_01: Love also does not act boastfully.
SPEAKER_01: Jealousy is when we don't have what others do have, right?
SPEAKER_01: Boasting is when we possess what we believe others to be lacking.
SPEAKER_01: I have it, but you don't, right?
SPEAKER_01: And we want them to know about it.
SPEAKER_01: That's boasting.
SPEAKER_01: And that's the outworking of pride.
SPEAKER_01: It lifts me up.
SPEAKER_01: It lifts my family up.
SPEAKER_01: It lifts my group, however that's defined, up while putting you down, your family down, and your group down.
SPEAKER_01: My group is better than your group.
SPEAKER_01: I'm better than you because I have this and you don't.
SPEAKER_01: Boasting is heaping praise on yourself.
SPEAKER_01: It's behaving in a bragging kind of way.
SPEAKER_01: It refers to someone who exaggerates, someone who's offensive or overbearing and talking about themselves or their abilities or their possessions or their lives.
SPEAKER_01: It's simply unrestrained arrogance.
SPEAKER_01: And it's the opposite of being humble.
SPEAKER_01: You see, when we boast, we seek to make others jealous of what we have.
SPEAKER_01: Or at least make sure that the world knows who we are and what we've done.
SPEAKER_01: And by doing that, if we are acting boastfully, we are implicitly declaring you're less than me because you don't have what I have.
SPEAKER_01: You don't live up to my standards because I have something that you don't have.
SPEAKER_01: And that that's a kind of evil that fuels racism in today's world.
SPEAKER_01: If all you do is talk about yourself, if all you do is seek to direct conversations to your abilities, to your interests, your possessions, your job, your family, your problems, it becomes all about you.
SPEAKER_01: If you speak so that others are neglected, so that others aren't given significance, then you're boasting.
SPEAKER_01: You're not loving as God does.
SPEAKER_01: Love is not arrogant.
SPEAKER_01: Again, it's a verb.
SPEAKER_01: So love does not act arrogantly.
SPEAKER_01: Boasting generally comes from a certain level of arrogance, and to be arrogant is unloving.
SPEAKER_01: Arrogant people have an elevated, exaggerated view of themselves.
SPEAKER_01: They're self inflated, they're filled with pride and conceit.
SPEAKER_01: Those who act in that kind of way generally want to impress others with what they know, with what they've Done with where they've been.
SPEAKER_01: You know, the arrogant person is the person who always has a better story.
SPEAKER_01: You know somebody like that?
SPEAKER_01: They want you to know about their wisdom, their abilities, their possessions.
SPEAKER_01: How proud you ought to be to be in their presence.
SPEAKER_01: But let's bring it home a little bit more, because I think in Christians it looks sometimes a little bit differently.
SPEAKER_01: An arrogant Christian might put themselves out there as somebody who's really righteous.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, let me tell you about my prayer life.
SPEAKER_01: I pray every day, all the time.
SPEAKER_01: But what they don't tell you is that all they do is pray for themselves.
SPEAKER_01: Praying for things that they want, praying for things that they need.
SPEAKER_01: An arrogant Christian might seek to gain more from God rather than bring God glory and praise that's due to Him.
SPEAKER_01: If disaster comes on somebody else, an arrogant person might think they deserve whatever's coming.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever they get is what they deserve.
SPEAKER_01: But arrogance can also come in less obvious forms.
SPEAKER_01: We can display an arrogant spirit if we unwaveringly assume that our perception of other people is correct without ever having spoken to them.
SPEAKER_01: We can be arrogant if we make assumptions about the truth, about people or about situations.
SPEAKER_01: We can be arrogant if we judge the motives of another person's heart.
SPEAKER_01: See, we end up putting ourselves in a position of authority on matters when all we are doing is using our own opinion as fact, and that is becoming so rampant in our world today.
SPEAKER_01: Because we act as though we know all the truth there is to know when all we have seen is a meme on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
SPEAKER_01: And we think that's the truth.
SPEAKER_01: And we go about proclaiming reality when that's all we've seen.
SPEAKER_01: At its most basic point, arrogance is preoccupation with self rather than others.
SPEAKER_01: It's a dismissal of other people, of other views, of other opinions and convictions as less important.
SPEAKER_01: The demonstration of this is how we can't agree to disagree anymore.
SPEAKER_01: We can't discuss.
SPEAKER_01: We live in a world in which if you're you disagree with me, you're just simply wrong.
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's simply arrogant.
SPEAKER_01: And at its core, at its core, it's a form of idolatry.
SPEAKER_01: Because we are proclaiming that we are more significant than the Lord Jesus Christ, who humbled himself.
SPEAKER_01: And the next negative action in our list in verse 5 is rudeness.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes this is translated acting improperly or acting unbecomingly or even dishonoring others.
SPEAKER_01: For our purposes, I'm going to state it as acting unbecomingly.
SPEAKER_01: Now, what does that mean?
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's a word that means behaving in an indecent, disgraceful, dishonorable, shameful way.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe I can illustrate it in this way.
SPEAKER_01: I found myself saying in our home and our parenting hundreds of times, probably at this point in time, that we don't do that in our house.
SPEAKER_01: That's not the way we do it in our house.
SPEAKER_01: Because that's inappropriate for how we act, for what we do in our family.
SPEAKER_01: And God says, My children love in this kind of way.
SPEAKER_01: They don't do things improperly, impolitely, unbecomingly.
SPEAKER_01: To act in an unbecoming manner is to impose your own perspectives, your own desires, your own way of doing things on others in an offensive kind of way.
SPEAKER_01: It's acting in a way that disregards common standards of politeness and kindness toward others that God expects of all of his children.
SPEAKER_01: Love does not do that.
SPEAKER_01: In a very simple and short way, acting unbecomingly is to not care about people around you.
SPEAKER_01: To not care enough to act politely, appropriately.
SPEAKER_01: But instead, love considers others as more significant.
SPEAKER_01: Do you ignore the visitors in church who speak or look differently than you?
SPEAKER_01: That's unbecoming.
SPEAKER_01: Not loving.
SPEAKER_01: Do you avoid certain people in public because they are different?
SPEAKER_01: That's unbecoming.
SPEAKER_01: Not loving.
SPEAKER_01: Now we might use the word rude for this.
SPEAKER_01: Rudeness is self-centeredness.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't care about others, which is the point of the next characteristic.
SPEAKER_01: Love does not act selfishly, it does not insist on its own way.
SPEAKER_01: Literally, if we were to put it into very wooden English, love does not seek itself.
SPEAKER_01: Love does not seek to be built up itself.
SPEAKER_01: Does not insist on its own way.
SPEAKER_01: In so many ways, this whole chapter is a literal genius of painting a picture of the Lord Jesus Himself.
SPEAKER_01: For example, in the Gospel of Mark, in Mark chapter 10, verse 45, it says, For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom.
SPEAKER_01: How is that not a description of not insisting on his own way?
SPEAKER_01: Even said hanging on the cross, you could call legions of angels in a moment.
SPEAKER_01: But he did not insist on his own way.
SPEAKER_01: Now we know Philippians chapter 2 speaks about the Lord Jesus and his humility.
SPEAKER_01: Before it gets into that, it says, Do nothing, church, do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others as more significant than yourselves.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, let each of you look out for his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
SPEAKER_01: Have this mind in yourselves, which is also in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Love doesn't look for opportunities to take advantage or to gain control for personal benefit.
SPEAKER_01: But instead it looks out for the good of others, even if it brings hurt or loss to me.
SPEAKER_01: Now we're all good, at least most of us, saying, yeah, I'm willing to go down and serve at the mission for a day.
SPEAKER_01: We can be humble to that point, right?
SPEAKER_01: But what if we had to pay to do that?
SPEAKER_01: What if we had to pay to be able to serve others?
SPEAKER_01: What if it cost us something?
SPEAKER_01: What if it brought hurt to us?
SPEAKER_01: What if not insisting on our own way brought hurt to us?
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that what the Lord Jesus did?
SPEAKER_01: He did not insist on his own way.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, he took all of the beatings, all of the punishment, all of the abuse.
SPEAKER_01: That's why 1 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 24 says, Let no one seek his own good but the good of his neighbor.
SPEAKER_01: Do your actions towards your neighbor, and remember, that's not just the guy that lives next door to you.
SPEAKER_01: It could be.
SPEAKER_01: Do your actions towards your neighbor result in building them up for good or tearing them down or undermining them?
SPEAKER_01: Does it bring them to the goodness and the kindness and the patience of Christ, or does it say, I don't want anything to do with that?
SPEAKER_01: The next item in our list, verse 5, is irritable.
SPEAKER_01: And this builds off of the negative points in the list.
SPEAKER_01: See, if a person is acting jealously and boastfully and arrogantly and shamefully and selfishly, then they're going to be easily provoked.
SPEAKER_01: They're going to be easily provoked.
SPEAKER_01: Love does not become provoked.
SPEAKER_01: This is a word that speaks of provoking to the point of exasperation.
SPEAKER_01: To the point of generating a sinful kind of response.
SPEAKER_01: Now I I confessed this in the first service, so I'll confess it to you as well.
SPEAKER_01: In my younger days in western North Dakota, we had these kind of ants that built massive anthills.
SPEAKER_01: Hopefully you've seen them.
SPEAKER_01: You know, to a little boy, everything is tall, but these these anthills seemed massive, right?
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes they could be a foot, foot and a half, two feet tall, and be gigantic, be three feet, four feet across.
SPEAKER_01: I liked to provoke them.
SPEAKER_01: I would ride my bicycle right through that anthill.
SPEAKER_01: But what was most enjoyable was using the holes in the anthills as placeholders for my firecrackers.
SPEAKER_01: What was even better was sticking the bottle rockets down the hole and then lighting the bottle rocket.
SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you, those ants were that were the big ants.
SPEAKER_01: About a centimeter long and fiery red.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes they were red and black, and they hurt.
SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you, they become provoked with fireworks.
SPEAKER_01: Go figure.
SPEAKER_01: They reacted fast.
SPEAKER_01: That's a reaction to being provoked.
SPEAKER_01: Love does not become provoked.
SPEAKER_01: Now I want you to consider two sides of this coin.
SPEAKER_01: The one side is the primary point being made here in our text, and that's this a person seeking to love someone else in the way that Christ loved us takes into consideration how that person is responding to the interaction.
SPEAKER_01: So you need to be aware of how the person that you're communicating with is receiving this information.
SPEAKER_01: And if you see that they're getting stirred up as a result of it, you back off.
SPEAKER_01: You don't provoke them because you consider the other person more significant than yourself.
SPEAKER_01: It is more important for the other person that I'm trying to love to not be provoked than it is for me to have my say or to get my say.
SPEAKER_01: Put in there.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't need to get it in there at all costs.
SPEAKER_01: Genuine love doesn't purposely push buttons that will provoke another person.
SPEAKER_01: So think of that person.
SPEAKER_01: You know their buttons, right?
SPEAKER_01: You know exactly what it takes to just set them off.
SPEAKER_01: Love is not doing that.
SPEAKER_01: Now the other side of the coin is the person on the receiving end, the one who's being provoked.
SPEAKER_01: And we've all been there, right?
SPEAKER_01: One of the things that I like to do is to take a whole string of my black cat firecrackers and light the whole thing on the anthill.
SPEAKER_01: Just set it off.
SPEAKER_01: Just one after another, after another, after another.
SPEAKER_01: You've been there, right?
SPEAKER_01: You've been there when there's that person that's just pushing you and pushing you and pushing you and pushing you.
SPEAKER_01: And it seems like it's not lighting up.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's because of what the person's saying, maybe it's because of their body language, maybe it's the tone that they're using, not necessarily the words.
SPEAKER_01: If we're going to be acting in love towards the person that is provoking us, we're not going to let ourselves get provoked.
SPEAKER_01: We will resist that urge out of love for the other person.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to see more of that in some items later in our list, but let's conclude today with the last item in verse 5.
SPEAKER_01: Love is not resentful.
SPEAKER_01: But that's more of an interpretation instead of a translation.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe better is love does not keep a record of wrongs.
SPEAKER_01: You see, this is a term that the Apostle Paul used from mathematics or from accounting.
SPEAKER_01: It means to count up, to keep a record of something.
SPEAKER_01: And I know that not many today use checkbook registers anymore, but if you can imagine a checkbook register, you know, you keep track of all of your expenditures and your deposits and all that stuff.
SPEAKER_01: You're keeping a record, right?
SPEAKER_01: Of what's in there.
SPEAKER_01: The statement includes the idea of keeping a record like that so that you can use it against somebody at a later date.
SPEAKER_01: You're keeping a record, but the record being kept as a record of wrongs, a record of hurts, a record of evils done to you, whether real or perceived.
SPEAKER_01: And that includes the idea on dwelling on the wrongs done to you, of occupying your mind with that list of wrongs.
SPEAKER_01: The people in Corinth apparently were keeping score.
SPEAKER_01: They were keeping track of things done to them.
SPEAKER_01: But what did Jesus tell his disciples?
SPEAKER_01: Wasn't it good old Peter who asked Jesus, Lord, how many times do I need to forgive this guy?
SPEAKER_01: He's just irritating me to no end.
SPEAKER_01: How many times do I have to forgive him?
SPEAKER_01: What did Jesus say?
SPEAKER_01: 70 times seven, right?
SPEAKER_01: Now he didn't say keep track of the 490 times you forgive.
SPEAKER_01: He said that to say, you keep on forgiving, right?
SPEAKER_01: You keep on forgiving.
SPEAKER_01: If we keep score, if we maintain an historical record of the wrongs done to us, what we are saying is, I get to judge.
SPEAKER_01: I get to hold a grudge, and I'm holding that wrong against people until I can repay it.
SPEAKER_01: But that is not at all the way God treats us, is it?
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 103 says that God removes our sins as far as the east is from the west.
SPEAKER_01: Isaiah says that it's as though God takes our sins and puts them behind his back so he can't see them anymore.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe the best is Isaiah 43, 25, where God says, I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will remember your sins no more.
SPEAKER_01: I remember being afraid of my dad sometimes, afraid that he would remember the last thing that I did, that I got disciplined for.
SPEAKER_01: Because if you remember the last thing that I got disciplined for, then this discipline is going to be far worse, right?
SPEAKER_01: Now, God, if he's a divine, if he is God, he can't forget, right?
SPEAKER_01: So it's not that God, God forgets that it ever happened, it's that he forgets that it's offending.
SPEAKER_01: He forgets that it is a wrong done against him because it has been taken care of.
SPEAKER_01: He has blotted out the wrong, he has blotted out the offense, and it no longer comes to his memory as something that grieves his holiness.
SPEAKER_01: I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.
SPEAKER_01: Do you hear that?
SPEAKER_01: Listen, child of God, there is no greater comfort to you in your sinfulness than that.
SPEAKER_01: What a treasure on Father's Day.
SPEAKER_01: We have a heavenly father who treats us that way.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you've said it yourself.
SPEAKER_01: I can forgive, but I can't forget.
SPEAKER_01: Tell me, how is that like God?
SPEAKER_01: How is it like God to say, I can forgive, but I won't forget?
SPEAKER_01: How does that square with, I will not remember your sins?
SPEAKER_01: If God does not remember our massive sin debt, if it is forgiven, if it is erased, and he does not remember its evil anymore, then how can we keep in our minds a record of wrongs done to us and still say, I have forgiven?
SPEAKER_01: Church Father Chrysostom observed that a wrong done against love is like a spark, a single spark that falls into the sea and is quenched.
SPEAKER_01: Love quenches wrongs rather than keeps a record of them.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't make a memory wall out of all of the evils done to us.
SPEAKER_01: Some of us have forgiven but not forgotten.
SPEAKER_01: You're still holding that memory tightly in your mental grasp, almost as if it's locked in a cage to not be let loose.
SPEAKER_01: If that's the case, have you truly forgiven?
SPEAKER_01: Have you emulated the love of your God for you?
SPEAKER_01: Are you holding on to that record of wrong to pull it out at just the right time to use as a painful dagger?
SPEAKER_01: Are you holding on to the memory to ensure that in some way you won't be hurt in the same way again?
SPEAKER_01: Are you holding on to the hurt done to someone else, maybe to a loved one?
SPEAKER_01: As though somehow you could be the one exacting revenge?
SPEAKER_01: Are you forgiving the way God has forgiven you?
SPEAKER_01: I know I've stepped on a lot of toes this morning, so let me make sure that I cover everybody.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you find yourself relieved.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you hear this list of how how love acts and you think, wow, I'm not so far off after all.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe I'm doing pretty good.
SPEAKER_01: If that's you, my encouragement to you is to watch out.
SPEAKER_01: Watch out.
SPEAKER_01: Search your heart, and you will find that somewhere you are truly failing to love.
SPEAKER_01: If you think that you're doing well, ask the Lord to reveal his truth to you.
SPEAKER_01: God says, You are my children.
SPEAKER_01: My children display my love.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know about you, but that feels like an impossible standard to me.
SPEAKER_01: But thanks be to God that he's given us his spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Because he does not call us to do something that he has not empowered us to do.
SPEAKER_01: And he says to his children, I've given you everything you need in my spirit to go out and to love others as I have loved you.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_01: Father in heaven, we praise you for your love.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you on this Father's Day that we can think about your love for us, your faithfulness to us.
SPEAKER_01: Help us to love like you.
SPEAKER_01: Put your character within us.
SPEAKER_01: May that fruit of the Spirit be displayed in us.
SPEAKER_01: May the world see us and know that we love because you loved us.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, we hear your call to love.
SPEAKER_01: We hear it.
SPEAKER_01: But we cry back to you that we can't do this.
SPEAKER_01: The power of our flesh is just too great to take this on.
SPEAKER_01: And so we we ask that you would give us the strength of your spirit to follow you and to subdue the selfish demands of our sinful nature.
SPEAKER_01: We want to bring you glory.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, we truly do.
SPEAKER_01: We want to bring honor and glory to your name in how we love.
SPEAKER_01: Be pleased to do that work in us so that our love might be seen by the world.
SPEAKER_01: And they see Jesus in that place.
unknown: 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.