And this morning, I would like you to turn, please, with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 12. At the very end, we'll read it, verse 27 through 13.8. That's found on 11.40 in the Bibles that are in front of you. 1 Corinthians chapter 12 at 27, and we will work to 13.8. Let's give our attention this morning to the word of the Lord. Now, you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues. are all apostles, are all prophets, are all teachers, do all work miracles, do all possess gifts of healing, do all speak with tongues, do all interpret, but earnestly desire the higher gifts. I should focus on that verse. Earnestly desire the higher gifts, and I will show you a still more excellent way if i speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love i am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal and 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 if i give away all that i have and if i deliver up my body to be burned but have not love i gain nothing love is patient and kind love does not envy or boast it is not arrogant or rude it does not insist on its own way it is not irritable or resentful it is not rejoice and wrong at wrong doing but rejoices with the truth love bears all things believes all things hopes all things endures all things love never ends we'll read down to 13 as for prophecies they will pass away as for tongues they will cease as for knowledge it will pass away for we know in part and we prophesy in part but when the perfect comes the partial will pass away when i was a child i spoke like a child i thought like a child i reasoned like a child when i became a man i gave up childish ways for now we see in a mirror dimly but then face to face now i know in part then i shall know fully even as i have been fully known so now faith and hope and love abide these three but the greatest of these is love may the lord bless his word this morning well love is not something that comes naturally to us at least on biblical terms I'm not very good at love neither are you so I feel better saying that most of the time we don't even know what we're talking about when we talk about love when we say I love you or we use this word so commonly in our culture that celebrates that everything is just about love. Today I want to spend some time on 1 Corinthians 13. I thought this would be helpful for us as a congregation. We've had heavier topics as of recent, and indeed this is still a heavy topic, but it's one of those very practical subjects that I think is so important for the life of a congregation, because as time goes on, we can forget the importance of this great truth that is set before us in the body of christ and we have to spend just a minute to sort of understand to know what the apostle paul is doing the context here in corinth because they had love all backward and wrong in the way that they had approached the kingdom of god corinth was such an interesting church so many problems so many challenges amazing it's a church of Jesus Christ, but they had everything wrong in terms of really summarily that this was a church that was simply caught up in worldliness in every sort of avenue and facet of ministry. They looked at everything with worldly lenses and the church was a mess because of it. And in this particular section, Paul is addressing a worldly view of gifts in the life of the church. He is concerned to have us think about each member's important part in the body of christ and the fact that he gives gifts to all and enhances those gifts for the benefit of the body each one of you being very important to all the whole body i was talking to somebody yesterday who broke their toe like the fourth one and i said it's amazing how those toes all together work and when one of those little toes goes out. It affects everything. That was Dizzy Dean, the pitcher. I know that story when he broke the toe and could not pitch after that. I'm into baseball now because my kids are into baseball. The poor Padres, the poor Padres. In Corinth, the whole view of ministry was worldly. And they began to think that some in the church were more spiritual than others, were greater than others they had a huge problem in the church with their view of tongue speaking glossolalia the dreams and the visions and um the supernatural stuff the the prevailing opinion was whoever is able to speak with inspired speech with this tongue speaking is truly spiritual is truly great in the kingdom of god and the ones who have attained a true heavenly wisdom and communion with god are those who who can who can do this particular gift and do it in such a way that it's powerful for the body of christ and so everyone became enamored with this in corinth they were enamored with this kind of gift to the marginalization of those who were thought to be nothing who had what they thought were the little gifts in the church and you could just see what would happen with that those little gifts and those marginalized gifts or those gifts that were not thought well of people didn't even want to exercise them because who cares about that paul paul is concerned in this section with the mindset that is driving this whole phenomenon in Corinth the motivations that are driving this phenomenon we know this uh we we we just live in a day starstruck by personalities and greatness we are so attracted to the big figures today and the sense that those who have the the greatest have the most to offer us. Is that true? That those who have the greatest abilities have the most to offer us? Who gets marginalized in the process of that? Think about it. I always think of Fred Trost just as an example. One of the most joyful saints, encouraging saints in his wheelchair. Fred Trost ever be thought great in the kingdom of God? He was a unique figure among us. We never looked to the small town coach. We never looked to the elderly person who brings to us a lot of wisdom through life, right? You have a lot of elderly here you could learn a lot from. we just don't think this way. My father was a committed servant in a small town for 33 years at one place in a school. Teacher, coach, athletic director, administrator, and affected a lot of students. He loved his community. He was a Christian. He loved those whom he served. It was a small town, but he was never Pat Riley. He was never Dean Smith. Because of the notoriety, we think that what is popular or what is high esteemed among people equals the greatest, or the greatest greatness, you might say. Greatness is seen in places you'll never expect or look naturally, or even value. And often, the fruits of that greatness are only seen after such people are long and gone, dead and gone. you know the more eccentric the more outlandish the more against the status quo today you can be you drum up the greatest following and this is who we set up as icons in our society we do the same thing this is this is corinth revisited so in corinth the extraordinary gifts were used to promote themselves and everyone was enamored by these figures and the whole body was suffering because they didn't understand that each person, person made in the image of God, that in the body of Christ mattered to him and that he had distributed gifts to each individual since each individual composes the body and when the gifts were treated this way the whole body suffered because of it gifts were undervalued and despised and neglected because of this now we pick up in our our section here in the time we have um at the end of chapter 12 and i want you to notice the verse notice there he rehearses the apostolic gifts of that period and i'll mention that at the very end of the way that paul addresses that but i want you to look carefully at verse 31 for a minute with me do all do this do all do this but earnestly desire the higher gifts and i will show you a still more excellent way and you say wait a minute that that is sort of counterintuitive to what i just said and i would suggest that the translation is not all that helpful. Red as an indicative, it means this. You, but you desire the higher gifts. That's where all your desire is. But I have a far better way to show you. I'm going to show you a more excellent way. You have set your desire on all these big things in the kingdom this is where all your desire is in the church i've got a better way to show you that's the sense of this and that way is love corinth was a church without love that was the problem and a church without love demonstrates that they are a church that has lost the narrative has lost the message is not moving forward and have forgotten the goal of all ministry in the name of Jesus Christ. And Paul is explaining this. Paul is helping the church with this. Without love, nothing profits. It's interesting how he says it. Nothing profits you. You are nothing. You gain nothing. And you see why that would be important in terms of service there is nothing for you in it at all if it lacks love all those efforts all those time that you're doing you see why in first corinthians three he would say a lot of what people do in the kingdom of god will be burnt up It will not have made any real difference. Now, Paul is saying here is that there is a principle that God intends for us that drives the whole operation of the church. Commonly, this passage is used at weddings. And I'm always hesitant to use it at weddings. It's a great passage. It's a beautiful, beautiful statement of Paul here. All the authors recognize how wonderful this is by Paul in terms of its beauty and how it's written. But I don't think what you can miss about this is this is not some sweet sentimental passage. This is a tough love rebuke of the church. Because what he's saying is you all can do a lot of things for God that are good and right, But without love, it's fruitless and damaging to you and damaging in the life of the kingdom. So we're challenged a bit here with how we've misunderstood the passage. Often we say when we come to this passage that we're used to saying is love is not primarily a feeling. And that's true, although I think feelings matter. I hope I feel like loving somebody, of course. Even when I don't feel like loving them, I still should love them. But so what we typically say is that love is a verb here. They're verbs. Love is an action here. And that's absolutely true. But most people, when they think of love today, they do think in terms of sentiment and feeling. And most of it is feeling. And then they come to this conclusion that it means never having to convict or tell anyone that anything is wrong. That's what Paul's doing here. It's not love to bypass telling somebody that they're in error. That's not love, right? That's our common idea here. But this is kind of where it stops. And Paul here, we say, is just talking about love as a verb. And I would suggest to you that he's not just saying get to work. That he's not just telling you to get to work in love. He's doing a lot more than that. He's pushing us and he's pressing the church on the motivating principle that's driving the actions. And that's really important, isn't it? Love is the motivation to the action. This is why Calvin said, what's happening here is Paul is regulating and providing a regulating principle for all actions in the church so you could say you have a regulative principle given here the regulative principle that we rarely talk about i'm just going to do whatever god's word says let's start here think of romans 12 let your love be without hypocrisy that means without masks in those world they had actors it has everything to do with sincerity doesn't it this is what we can't see in people when they're doing something and this is how paul is sort of pulling back the curtains and getting to the heart of the matter in service in the kingdom. It may be something good you're doing. It may be something right. But as we say in our day, is it authentic? Or is it really phony if we pulled back the curtain? What does love look like? What is love? How does it drive action? 1 Thessalonians 4, 9, For you yourselves are taught by God to love one another. God has taught you how to love. Who can forget Jesus' words? A new commandment I give you, that you love one another as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this, all will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. So as I said at the beginning, nobody does this naturally. It is something that is taught to us. It is something that is given to us that frames our minds and drives motivation. And that's what Paul is going after here. In Christ, he says, we see selfless love, a denial of self, an emptying of the self in the sense of not setting aside his divinity, but that think of all the glory that he had with his father before the world began. And he took on our robes, our human nature. It's the promotion of others' interests than mine. It puts the lives of others, as Christ did, before his, if you will, when he came here in the incarnation. He loved when he was hated. He gave when he was scorned. He provided when he was despised. He sacrificed when no one asked. He humbled himself for the purpose of lifting up others. Never, listen to this, giving up on his church. John 13, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. And then he gets up in front of them and takes a towel and gets on his knees, the king of glory. And in a sort of moment of symbolic transformation, girds himself, showing the incarnation, and washes them, becoming a slave and servant to them, and washes their feet. Now, contrary to all that, is that service or purpose or involvement in Christ's church makes this about us. And that's fake, Paul says. That's phony. All attention on us in life is not love. And how difficult. I came out of the womb a de facto narcissist. So did you. It's just, to some degrees, it's stronger in others than others than others, right? We're recovering narcissists. And because of that, love does not regulate actions. What does it produce? He wants us to think about that. He wants us to think about what does actions without love produce in the body? What does that look like? And that's where he begins here. Notice, if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. Keep in mind, tongue speaking was the major issue he's going after here in this section of the epistle to the Corinthians. If I was able to use the tongues of angels when I spoke, if I had the, let's put this in common terms here. if I had the greatest preaching voice, if I had the greatest communicative abilities in all of the world. Remember, Paul was criticized for not being able to speak well, but the church was caught up in excellency of speech. Cicero's ideas. Communicating. If I had that, if I was the greatest orator ever to exist, if I was golden mouth Chrysostom, who would come? If I was so eloquent that I sounded like a musical instrumentation and have not love, you ever heard a gong? I would love to hit it right now. Just love to hit a gong. It's an awful sound and all of you would wake up. I see you awake. I'm not saying that to anyone. It's a terrible sound. It profits you nothing. At least not before God, right? Isn't that the one to whom it matters? If I had a beautiful mind, if I could prophesy, in other words, if I had the ability to put together the scriptures and everyone said, wow, that guy could bring it home. Paul kicks the sacred cow here. If I have knowledge, you know how important that was in this culture? If I've read all the philosophers, you could say, If we have all the fathers, the church fathers down, if I've collected the best of them, and I know so much, and my reading is great, which is important, isn't it? If I understand all the mysteries of the faith, faith itself, if I have obtained to be the greatest theologian, and I appear so strong before everyone that I could, in their eyes, move mountains, if i have that beautiful mind but i have no love i'm nothing i gain nothing he's taking this as a rebuke he's taken it all away you have your reward if you're a puritan precisionist if you can parse the hebrew and the greek to a t what do you think that knowledge is for this is what i'm getting at here some people come up and say pastor you've been given a great gift to preach the word of god and i i always think to myself when i say that it's such an encouragement i always think if god ever gave me a gift it's for who you it's for you not for me i get to enjoy the benefit of a gift, but it's for you. That's why he gives gifts or enhances gifts. What about the greatest giver? If I gave all my goods to feed the poor, my own body to martyrdom in the fire, to be burned at the stake, if I rose up to be that kind of figure like Polycarp Who slapped the lion and said, why are you holding back? You know, you could give your body to be burned for all this. And it's all done in pride. I have not love. I'm nothing. Your gifts are given to bless others. To help others. not to separate because you think you're the stronger or to prove correctness or to control people. It's usually about control. When it becomes about the righteous or the rightness of it all, divorced from the blessing of the mind to help others in the struggle, it profits you nothing. This is why he says knowledge puffs up. So you see the rebuke all throughout the book here. I want to quote a URC pastor for a minute to hear this. In my estimation, the primary sin of Christians in our Reformed tradition is pride. We are convinced we are right about doctrine, so everyone else is looked down upon condescendingly. We may be right about our doctrine, but we cannot forget Paul's words. It's also a doctrine to the effect that if we have not love for our brothers and sisters, even when we think them wrong, we are nothing but windbags and noisy gongs. You're a windbag, he says. That's Kim Riddlebanger. Well, we love that. Sometimes people who think that love is never telling anyone that they're wrong love a statement like that. That statement's true. But the motivation of telling somebody that they're wrong can just as much be from love, can't it? It's easier to be orthodox than loving. As it's been said, good theology is not a substitute for love. So this is a kind of regulative, explicit principle that we need to be balanced and give just as much attention to in our tradition that the Holy Spirit's commandment here in our life is love. This changes your whole approach to the church. That's why I think this is so important. It's good for me. It's good for everyone. Well, you know, those people are hard to love. Or those people are to this. Or those people on and on and on. Wow. Well, If you see that, God gave you the gift to love them, didn't he? You've been taught that. I've been taught that. Motivation. Why does the teacher teach? For the paycheck? Never be a good teacher. Why does the pastor preach? To be known, never be a good pastor. Why does the missionary go? Why does the bulletin person passing out bulletins do that? To be seen that they're here? That's not love. Why do you give? So that the deacons will know that you give something? That's not love. Why do you do anything? At the heart of love is the interest of everyone else. And that greatness is never known or celebrated in this life to the ones we put out front. Wendell Berry's essay on historical and agricultural essays, I just thought captures this so well. because of the obsession with short-term results that may be contained with the terms and demands of a single life, the interest of community is displaced by the interest of career. The careerist teacher judges himself and is judged by his colleagues, not by the influence he is having upon his students or community, but by the number of his publications the size of his salary and the status of the place to which his career has taken him thus far and in ambition he is where he is only temporarily I love this point he is on his way to a more lucrative and prestigious place because so few stay think of the 30-year thing i talked about earlier to be aware of the effects of their works teachers are not judged by their teaching but by the short-term incidentals of publication and service that teaching is a long-term service that a teacher's best work may be published in the children of grandchildren of his students cannot be considered for the modern educator like his practical brethren in business and industry will honor nothing that he cannot see boom your work today may not be seen until your children's children and Wendell Berry challenges why are we doing this Paul describes love as it should function in the body as we use our gifts and all of this directly counters if I had time what I would do with you today and I don't have time is I would show you how each one of the things that he's about to say he's already addressed I can tie it back with lines throughout the book where he says whereas there is back in chapter oh I forgot the chapter there is among you envying and strife and divisions you are carnal and walk as men i think that's chapter three so what does he say verse four what is love love is patient and kind it does not envy or boast you'll notice it is not arrogant or rude does not insist on its own way it is not irritable or resentful it does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth love bears all things believes all things hopes all things endures all things love never ends the whole thing is how love is intended to function in a body and let me just say all of us all of us break down here this is this is where we fail the most we see how important this is Paul uses verbs to describe this to show authentic Christianity, real Christianity, if you will. You could sum it up by saying love has the defining characteristic of a denial of yourself. It's, as Calvin said again, the regulating principle of all of our actions. It's putting the interests of others and often even at times your own conscience before others. Did you hear that? Your conscience is not sovereign. Love is personified here. Love is patient. It does not get upset or frustrated or separate off when people don't do things the way you think they should do them. It does not get angrier. It does not avenge itself. Love is kind. Its concern is the well-being and the happiness of others. It's not ready to envy or boast. It's not arrogant or rude. Notice the spirit behind it. Notice what Paul's the motivation behind this. Attitude is so important. Jealousy, arrogance, rude, being rude comes from pride. It's the attitude of the heart. Sometimes when people have convictions, the entire approach of having the conviction is to look down upon others for not seeing it the way that they see it or doing it the way that they do it. Notice the next thing. Love does not insist on its own way. Regulative principle. There's a beautiful... characteristic in James that I think is so important for leadership where it says love is having the ability to yield. Isn't that a hard person who just can't yield? Here's one for our times. Love absolutely despises when people do wrong. We hate it. We're not ready to expose all the failures and faults of someone and publish it all over the Internet. That's not Christian. There's processes to deal with that. We're not ready to rejoice and celebrate somebody's fall. We're sad about that. That's real, isn't it? It bears everything. It has the disposition in the midst of interactions with others to believe the best and to hope and look forward to the best. It's willing to stay the course with people and endure and not run away from them. If any of that troubles you today, just imagine Christ giving you what you deserve. I can't imagine if he rejoiced in my wrongdoing. Or he decided to expose all my shame. Or he went out and told everyone about it. I'd be devastated. Or he would not endure with me. Or he would refuse me. Or he'd refuse to be patient and merciful to me. I can't imagine if I broke his law and he said, that's it, I'm out. How many people leave the church selfishly with no love? Paul says, pursue this, pursue this. You might even say this is the greatest gift to the church, love. At least it's the motivating principle. Paul says in verse eight, love never ends, beloved. Agape, sacrificial love, never falls down. It has a permanent quality. Notice he says, you guys are all interested in this stuff, but he'll say in the rest of this chapter, notice tongues is not mentioned here. Tongues at some point were designed to cease. That stuff was designed to stop in the life of the church so that love would be permanent. I think it's so important for understanding the ministry today if what we're pursuing has eternal value. you you and i me even as a pastor i'm not really here for me you know um as much as we fail what do we do we confess our sins and we're patient with one another we could look at all the failings of one another and point them all out but we have to look here number one and then think my gifts are not for me they're for you And if that's the case, your gifts, no matter how small you think they are, that's the point. What is greatness? What is greatness? It's that cup of cold water that nobody sees, being taken to somebody in need. That's love. That's lasting. so now faith hope and love abide these three but the greatest of these is love pursue love that makes for a healthy church a real church an authentic one and maybe it's good just to close with jesus's words new commandment i give to you that you love one another just as i have loved you you also are to love one another by this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. Amen. Heavenly Father, forgive us for a lack of love in our lives, for various degrees of hypocrisy. Thank you for covering that through the blood of Christ. Help us, O Lord, to love we forget this. May it be the regulating principle of our actions and sincerity for our brethren. May this church be filled with loving servants. May what we do come with a love that is without masks, without hypocrisy. Thank you for being so tender to us and forgiving us and covering all our sin and shame. May the love the Heavenly Father has for us drive us then in great gratitude to love one another and to be sincere in our walk with you. Let us use our gifts for your glory and may oh lord the little things be valued in your kingdom again forgive us for focusing on all what we think are the great things hear our prayer in jesus name amen