On the topic, without it we are nothing,
and without it we gain nothing.
If you're busy turning to 1 Corinthians 13,
you're right.
I'll also be turning to 1 John 4
verse 7.
And I'm fully aware that as I speak
this, as I share it, this is a
message for me.
I need it.
I preach it to myself as well.
For it starts off by saying, even if
you are very eloquent in verse 1, even
if you can speak with the tongues of
men and of angels, even
though one can be ever so eloquent and
reach the heights of expression which can touch
people emotionally, soulishly, and
they have been great, great speakers, and they
still are.
There was one great orator about 250 years
ago, he was also a Shakespearean actor.
I think it was Spurgeon who said of
him that he could utter a single word
like Mesopotamia and cause people to laugh or
say the same word, Mesopotamia, in a way
that they would all cry.
So I'm fully aware of the desperate need
for God by his spirit to work.
So you help me while we seek God's
word together.
As we examine it together, you be in
prayer as I am.
Because even if it is great speech according
to verse 1, that covers all the languages
and all expressions and all emotions, and even
the angels' languages, if it is without God,
without his love, it is all just a
noise.
When I come into a service, I often
pray, Lord, find me out, discover me, catch
me.
Corner me, don't let me escape.
And this is one of these words, one
of these texts that surely you have to
be absolutely stone dead to not to be
caught and to be discovered and to be
exposed and stripped by this word.
Now, none of us really can reach these
heights of speech that are spoken here.
Some are more gifted, some are less.
But so what?
Even the greatest speaker is but nothing and
is only an irritating nuisance without God's love.
And it says this, Paul says this in
the midst of saying, seek the gifts, seek
the greater gifts like prophecy.
But then he says, like in verse 2,
even if you have the gift of prophecy,
speaking the mind and word of God, even
if you have insight, the second part of
verse 2, insight that is so amazing that
you are able to understand even the mysterious
things behind the word.
And the mysteries of this world.
And you understand it adds all knowledge.
And knowledge keeps on changing.
What they knew 20 years ago is put
into the back shelves of museums.
It's hardly worth anything today.
What they knew about the first engines was
wonderful in those days and it was world
news.
First vehicles could go as fast as 10
miles an hour.
They warned that many people would be killed
at such a speed.
Now there are vehicles or rockets that travel
with people in it at over 20,000
kilometers an hour.
And there are faster things.
Even the petrol engine might become a thing
of the past.
When you perhaps saw in another generation, they
started with the first hydrogen vehicles.
They just pump air into it or the
part of air that is hydrogen.
But even if you know all that, and
most of us know very little even about
the old engines, let alone the new ones,
even if we know all future knowledge, and
if we add to that, at the end
of verse 2, all faith, all religious power,
so to say, Speaking here of
dramatic faith, faith that is visible and works
and even moves mountains.
But without this single ingredient, all that knowledge,
prophecy, eloquence, understanding of mysteries, and all the
knowledge of the future and all faith all
put together, the sum total of it is
not even a little bit.
It is nothing.
We should already be asking ourselves, well, what
have I been busy with then this past
week?
What am I busy with even now?
If everything put together is in vain without
this ingredient, and this ingredient is everything.
Without it we have nothing.
Then in verse 3 of 1 Corinthians 13,
we discover that we also are nothing without
it.
And we get nothing.
We gain nothing.
We will receive nothing forever without it.
Even if it is a sacrificial life you
live, and it speaks here of the works
that usually go along with love, even if
you are able to do these outward signs
without the inward ingredient of God's love, without
it you gain nothing.
Even if I bestow in verse 3 all
my goods to feed the poor, that is
a real humanitarian philanthropic kind spirit.
But surely that is love, isn't it?
We would sing the praises of such a
person.
The world would offer them the Nobel Peace
Prize.
But it goes further.
It says even if you are so sacrificial
that you give not only your goods, your
property, your house, your things, but you even
give yourself without God's love, it is still
nothing for you to gain.
There is nothing in it.
So it is really cutting to the quick.
This drives the point home.
In case we escape through the net in
verse 1, and we still, as the net
got finer, we escaped in verse 2, by
verse 3 we say, well, what is it?
And also, how can I get it?
What is so important that without that ingredient,
even if you become a martyr for the
faith, imagine, even being burned alive at the
stake.
That without it, you gain absolutely nothing.
It makes me to have to tremble before
God's word.
I cannot but say, Lord, all that I've
been doing in all these years, and all
the work I do, and the efforts, it
can all be utterly useless and in vain.
Now, of course, this is not a discouragement
to good works.
This is not to make you say, well,
I'm giving it up then.
If my good deeds and my helping others
and my sacrificial lifestyle of giving and donating
is all useless, then I'm just going to
throw the towel in.
No, that's not what it's saying.
But it's telling us that unless all these
things, our eloquence, our gifts of ministry, our
understanding, our discernment, our knowledge and our sacrifice,
unless it's not just mixed with love and
oiled with love, unless it's driven by love,
unless it's founded by God's love and on
that rock bed, it is all in vain.
You've heard enough sermons, I'm sure, and you've
heard about this topic many times, and you
know that there's a difference in various types
of love, human love and God's love.
I won't even go into that.
Obviously, this must need a miraculous supernatural love,
and it must be the love of God.
Now, this is so practical because right there
and then, as we begin to ask ourselves,
well, what is it like?
I hear about love, but what is it
like?
It goes into the details of a very
practical way to understand and recognize it.
I'm going to look at that very briefly,
and then I'd like to end with a
final point of looking at the how-to.
How do we arrive at this love?
How do we get it?
Some practical measures that we have to take,
lest we're of the attitude that we're waiting
for that love to happen and to just
get into us.
I just wanted two examples as it says
what it is, as it defines it.
Verse 4.
Love is patient.
In my version here, it says love suffers
long.
It comes right down to your everyday life.
It takes it right out of the emotional
into the everyday doing it of living your
normal life.
In case you're wondering, well, what does it
mean love is patient?
Well, start by asking yourself, how long has
God been patient with you?
That's the best illustration of patience.
That you stand astounded at how long-suffering
God has been with you.
Think of what you're like, and what you've
been like, and how you have caused God
to have to suffer long, and He has
been patient with you.
Keep in mind, just by the way, in
case you take the illustration too far and
you say, well, that's wonderful, so I can
just hang in there and He'll just be
patient with me forever.
No, not at all.
In another place, God says His patience is
there to lead us to repentance.
If you marvel right now that God has
been patient with you regarding a certain issue,
then repent of that issue, of that sin,
today.
Don't stretch His patience another day.
Let's leave that.
We've got too many things to look at.
Love is kind.
Love does not envy, or love is not
jealous.
Let's just look at the last two parts.
Love is not jealous, and love does not
boast, it says.
The last part of verse four.
They're actually both part of the same coin,
just two different sides of one coin.
Jealousy puts other people down.
Boasting puts yourself up.
Envy is trying to squash others through criticism
and through just resisting and hating others.
And boasting, it says it in different ways,
vaunting yourself, or puffing yourself up, or parading
yourself.
Boasting is the final state of selfishness.
C.S. Lewis, a great apologist for the
Christian faith and author of many wonderful Christian
books, said that the utmost evil, the worst
evil, is bragging.
C.S. Lewis, a great apologist for the
Christian faith and author of many wonderful Christian
books, said that the utmost evil, the worst
evil, is bragging.
Bragging, the utmost evil, have you thought of
it in that way before?
Just to sober you up, what do you
have that God hasn't given you?
What health do you have that you are
so confident about as if though you have
produced it and it's yours?
You and I are just a hairbreadth from
our lost heartbeat.
That self-confidence and bragging nature of yours
is the utmost evil, for it is a
rejection of God and it is deception to
the uttermost.
Even what you might have done and done
for others, what could you do without the
health and the blessings that God has given
you to do it with?
Do you find yourself with a desperate striving
to be recognized and therefore you have to
brag a bit just to embellish the stories
you tell and to add a little bit
more to what was really true?
Just to gain the attention and to brag
about you.
Then, in
verse 5, love does not behave rudely.
In other words, it does not misbehave, it
is not impolite, it is the utmost respect
for others.
It teaches you to be tactful and
careful and wise.
Sometimes you have to be very tactful and
very careful.
I heard yesterday of a new minister and
his family who moved into their new church.
He had been transferred from one church to
another.
When they arrived, one of the church ladies
baked a pie as a welcoming gift and
presented it to them at their home, a
big pie for the minister's wife and his
children.
When they cut it open and tasted it,
they realized that the lady of the church
was not gifted in pie making.
They just could not stomach it and they
reluctantly had to just throw it into the
rubbish bin.
But then the minister was in a predicament.
How was he to say thank you and
be honest?
He wrote a letter, something to the tune
of, Dear Mr. So-and-so, thank you
for your kindness and generosity to me and
my family.
I can assure you with a pie like
that, it's not going to stay around in
our house for long.
Sometimes tact is just an excuse for being
ashamed of the gospel and we pretend we're
being wise but we're just embarrassed about our
Lord.
So make sure that if you're tactful, if
it's the love of God that makes you
not rude, then that it's from God and
that it's not just a cunning and your
own wisdom.
Now I end with a final point which
consists of about six or seven on how
to.
If God's love is the crucial ingredient without
which everything else is just stupid and doesn't
even come into the picture is absolutely nothing.
If these ingredients, as we've read the definition
of it, it's so high, so unreachable, so
to say, within our human strength and it
is.
We ought to be desperate.
We ought to be desperate for God and
crying to God in our hearts and often
saying, God, I need this love.
Show it to me.
How do I have this love?
The first point is that you've got to
start in God.
You've got to be born of God to
have this love.
I'd said our second text was 1 John
4 verse 7.
Let's briefly look at it.
Beloved, let us love one another for love
is of God and everyone who loves is
born of God and knows God.
We discover here that without new birth, without
being born from above, without God implanting himself
into you, you will not be able to
reach for this love.
Going back a chapter in chapter three, verse
nine, it says, whoever has been born of
God does not sin.
For his seed, that is God's seed, remains
in him.
You have to ask yourself the crucial question,
am I born again?
Am I converted?
Have I repented and turned to God and
am I living a new life?
And we find here that this ingredient becomes
possible when you're born of God.
We've read there, he who is born of
God has received the seed, that is the
nature, that is the character, it is simply
the spirit of God, it is Jesus Christ
in your heart.
We could put it like this, you've received
the DNA of God, you've received the basic
building blocks, the basic building blocks of life
itself.
So have you been born into his family?
Because you cannot begin to display your father's
characteristics if you're not born of him, if
he's not your father.
I'm just going to look at a few
random points, I said this is the last
point, the how-to, I said there are
about six points.
Secondly, consider and marvel at his love.
I'm not putting it in any specific order
or sequence, I hope at least one of
these points means something to you.
Spend time considering God's love for you.
In other words, even when you are born
again, don't say well that's it, it's done,
it's finished and therefore it's going to happen.
There are some things that you've got to
do, that's what we're considering now.
1 John 3 verse 1, have a look
at that.
Because remember you may have received the seed
of God but you may have so crushed
that seed or so blocked his seed and
so grieved his spirit that there's no evidence
of his presence.
Look at 1 John 3 verse 1 and
consider with me here, behold what manner of
love the Father has bestowed on us.
That we should be called the children of
God.
Have you ever marveled at that and just
contemplated and meditated and stood astounded and adored
and worshipped God as you think of his
love towards you?
Maybe you've never considered his patience with you.
Could be that you're hanging on to sinful
things because you just don't see and recognize
his manner of love.
In fact maybe that's why you persevere in
some purposeful wickedness because you do not behold
the love of God.
Consider this, that his love is not free.
Well it's free for you to receive, it's
not free for the giver.
You freely receive but let me tell you
and the Bible makes it clear that you
were bought with a price.
We are reminded for instance 1 John 4
verse 19 that he first loved us.
Recognize as you behold his love that instinctively
you have hated God.
I don't know how people can say I've
always loved the Lord.
By nature we are rebels against God.
If you've always loved the Lord well then
you first loved him.
But he loved us while we hated him.
But as you behold and consider that love,
don't make it cheap, it costs something.
It costs the most precious thing in the
world and in the universe, God's own sin.
Have you considered Christ bleeding for you?
That's the second point that I want to
just touch upon, helping you towards God's love
in you.
Because when we understand even if it's only
dimly, God's love, it melts us and it
causes a stirring of love towards him.
And it causes you to look at other
people very differently when you behold God's love
for you.
You see them as potential trophies of grace.
You look at them as a possibility of
God and as people loved by God, as
defiled as they may be.
We've read in Corinthians, love is not rude,
love is patient.
Well, you become very careful, very patient, very
polite and honouring towards a person who is
loved by God.
If you think of the price upon that
person's head and the preciousness, the value that
the Lord Jesus holds them in, then you
begin to treat them a bit differently.
The third point, grow in his love.
It's something that has got to be grown.
Remember, we've read there that God has planted
his seed in us if we are born
of him and he is our father.
It's his seed, now it's got to grow.
Do the things that make you grow.
Avoid the things that stunt your growth.
Spend time with the word.
Deal with sin thoroughly and properly according to
the way that God shows you so clearly.
In other words, grow up.
And if you don't turn to it, but
if you make a note, if you're writing
notes, in Ephesians 3.14-19, it says
there, and I'm just quoting half a sentence
to you.
Ephesians 3.14-19, it says there, and
I'm just taking little points out.
His Spirit in our inner being, we being
rooted and established in love, filled to the
measure of the fullness of God.
In other words, grow up in God.
Alright, we'll leave it there.
You can go and read that at home.
It's just that whole context there speaks about
growing up in God's love.
If you've received it, then grow it.
It's become fashionable to want to be tall.
It hasn't always been like that.
But it's considered to be a great advantage.
I have many bumps on my head to
prove otherwise.
Let's just speak spiritually.
Are you a dwarf spiritually?
I don't mean that you need to grow
up and be tall.
In other words, to boast and be vainglorious.
But are you at the growth where you
should be today?
Or are you a midget?
You're stunted.
You're a runt.
You're never able to look in the eyes
of your colleagues because they've just surpassed you.
Get cracking.
Get going.
And let go of the things that are
dwarfing you.
There are some biological causes for lack of
physical growth, like the lack of essential vitamins
when you're a little baby.
Well, if you think that you can just
attain to these things that we speak of,
and meantime you're feeding yourself with junk food.
If you feed your flesh and feed the
carnal nature, well, that's what's going to grow
and dominate.
And you'll be ruled by the flesh by
sin.
Fourthly, learn to obey in order to love.
And just do it.
Don't say, well, I don't yet feel like
it.
It hasn't arrived.
I don't yet get it.
Just do it.
The world might say just do it, but
it never provides you with the power to
do anything.
God says do it, and he does it
in you if you're willing to obey.
He says to the lame man, arise and
walk.
Take up your bed and walk.
Say to your lame heart, obey God, oh
lame heart, and rise up.
In the same context of what John has
been telling us in his epistle, there are
a number of commands.
He speaks about what God has done, but
then he says, now you do this.
Look at in chapter 3, 1 John 3
verse 11.
This is the message we've heard from the
beginning, that we should love one another.
It's a command.
Do it.
Just a chapter before, it says in verse
15, do not love the world.
All the things in the world.
If anyone loves the world, the love of
the Father is not in him.
Do you want to get rid of the
love of the Father?
Love the world.
And it's also proof that the love of
God is not in you.
But don't try and work out the debate.
It says, love not the world.
It's a straight, simple, clear command.
Read a little bit further on.
When you get the time, what is the
world?
What are the things in the world that
it speaks about?
So it's a command.
Loving is a command.
It's something you receive, but it's also something
you do.
It's a verb and not a noun.
It has been said that a bell is
not a bell until you ring it.
And love is not love until it gives
itself away.
Love has to be done.
Puzzle it out and debate and spend hours
and weeks and months and waste years saying,
now how do I arrive?
How do I get hold of this thing,
this missing element, without which I am nothing?
It's been absolutely practical and it's just saying,
do it.
Love not the world.
Love the brethren.
The world teaches us the opposite.
It speaks about, I fell in love.
The same person, maybe sometime later when they
want to divorce, they'll say, well, I love
somebody else now.
It arrived.
The feeling came.
The chemistry was there.
It happened.
The true love of God has to be
done.
I'll leave out another point.
I was going to add the point of
let love be your motive, but I want
to draw right to an end now.
Go to the last point of the last
point.
Be cleansed.
Be purified in order to love.
In the context of 1 John chapter 3,
where it says, behold the manner, contemplate on
the manner of God, and it speaks about
loving the brethren.
It also says in verse 3, and everyone
who has this hope in him purifies himself
just as he is pure.
Purify yourself.
Let the blood of Jesus Christ be made
use of.
Bring your sins to the cross.
Confess them.
Deal with them if you want to love.
Otherwise, the quickest way to destroy God's love
is to allow sin to rule in your
life.
1 Corinthians 13 will forever be a mystery
to you.
You'll never understand it and never live it.
Forget about the long complicated list and you
say, but what about the years and years
and what about this and what about...
Well, just deal with the obvious thing first.
Purify yourself.
The Lord Jesus said to his church in
Revelation 3 that if you realize that you
have fallen from the heights of this first
love, then repent, be purified, do the first
works of repentance.
Go and apologize, make right, make restitution, do
the things that brought about the first love.
Just before I came here, late last night,
I shared with Brother Funos Bissi about this
topic and he said, he added this point
and it's so essential and this is the
final conclusion of all that we've discussed.
That is that as you do this, the
fragrance of God's love will stick to you
and there will be a wonderful aroma of
Christ that just travels with you.
He said to me, what a pity that
there is so much of ourselves that sticks
with us.
And wherever we go, our perfume fills the
air instead of the perfume of God's love
following us everywhere.
This is
the life that
Christ died for, nothing less.
Let's bow and pray.
Lord, we thank you for your great love
that we only have the slightest glimpse and
understanding of.
Lord, open our eyes through your word.
By your spirit, Lord, reveal the things that
have been blocking and destroying your love in
us.
And Lord, afresh, speak to us, breathe upon
us.
Help us, Lord, to obey your word.
And to fulfill what you've always said, that
we are to love the Lord our God
with all our heart, mind, soul and being.
And our neighbour as ourselves.
Lord, we see the great heights and the
impossibility of us reaching there without you.
Lord, we desperately need, not just a touch
of this love, but for that love to
control us and to possess us.
Please be with us, Lord, and continue to
minister to us and to challenge us and
to do your work in us.
Help us to obey your word at the
same time.
Amen.