Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Evil Love | Redefining Love (1 Cor. 13)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. And I'm Keith Simon. Right now, we're working through 1st Corinthians 13, Paul's definition of love. Years ago, I was at this event, and I struck up a conversation with a guy I didn't know very well. He'd been engaged for about a year, and he was telling me how excited he was to get married. And so I'm just trying to make small talk, and I ask him, what was he most excited about? Well, his answer was shockingly, surprisingly honest.

Starting point is 00:00:44 He says, well, to be honest with you, I think she'll finally stop cheating on me. Stop cheating on you. He explained that during their dating relationship, they both had cheated on each other. But once they got engaged, he finally stopped. For some reason, the commitment that changed him, but apparently it hadn't changed her. And he was thinking that once they got married, maybe that commitment, that would be the thing that finally changes her as well. He's kind of waiting on me to respond. And to be honest, I'm not sure what to say. I don't know him very well. But I decided that maybe honesty was the best policy

Starting point is 00:01:26 when it comes to such a giant life decision. And so I looked at him and I said, I don't know how to put this, but I think you guys might want to call this off. You see, cheating, it shows your heart's desire. It shows your heart's true disposition. It shows what your heart truly delights in. And both you and your future wife,

Starting point is 00:01:50 you guys have a history of delighting in the love of others. And I'm not sure that making a commitment is going to be the way to change that. Like it or not, we humans, we don't direct ourselves through the world using our commitments, our rational functions. Naive people, and if we're going to be honest, especially men, we tend to trick ourselves

Starting point is 00:02:15 into thinking that we do. Oh yeah, I'm just making reasonable choices. But we don't. We are all driven by desire, driven by what we delight in. This means that we all need to ask ourselves a really important question. What do I desire? What do I delight in?

Starting point is 00:02:36 And the best way to answer that question is by looking at our actions. The answer to that question, it's not only going to reveal who you are today, but it will probably reveal, determine who you will become tomorrow. In 1 Corinthians 136, Paul continues his definition of what love does and what love doesn't do. He writes, love does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth. What do you delight in? What do you long for? And how do you know?

Starting point is 00:03:17 Well, Paul agreed that the best rubric of our desires, of our delights, is action. So he was disheartened by what he saw happening inside of the Corinthian church. That church was characterized by divisiveness. In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul challenges Christians because they were suing each other in court. To him, this was the epitome of divisiveness. And it was, according to Paul, he repeats this word again and again and again, evil. Their evil actions were showing evil desires. So what was the deep desire that was leading them to sue each other to be divisive?

Starting point is 00:03:58 It was promoting their own self-interest. That was what they desired. They wanted to promote their own self-interest, me, my agenda, my glory. They were willing to break apart relationships just for that deep heart delight. They were willing to destroy the church just for that deep heart desire. What do you delight in? What do your actions show about what you really, truly desire? Let's just be honest.

Starting point is 00:04:32 We all make bad choices, and bad choices show us some of the wrong things that we delight in. The strange thing about this is, though, that some of these decisions, these bad decisions, they feel like they're being motivated by love. I've seen this often be the case with our sexual sin, right? We think we're being driven by love. It can also happen when we're being divisive and quarrelsome. We think that we're being driven by love, maybe to defend someone else's rights, a kids, a friends, a family members. But I think in other cases it's a little more obvious that our delight isn't being driven by love. When we demand our way, when we're impatiently controlling a room, when we're passively aggressively trying to get our take.

Starting point is 00:05:25 But again, what's interesting in those cases is that the delight we feel in doing those things, it can feel like love. But Paul's clear. True, genuine love doesn't desire evil. Why? Well, it's because love has a moral quality. True love rejoices to do. good. True love rejoices to improve the welfare of others. Genuine love, to use Paul's phrase, rejoices in the truth. When we delight in immorality and injustice, we delight in things that tear other people down, even if we don't think it is. God knows better. And hurting others for the sake of our sinful delight, that's not real love. What do you delight in?

Starting point is 00:06:21 What do your actions show? What do you want most deep down? Is it Jesus? Delighting in evil is a sign that we've got a disordered heart. It's a sign that we've got a heart that's redefined good and evil. It's a sign of a heart that's put wrong things above Christ. And given that we are all driven by, our desires. It's a sign that we're on a crash course. In 1902, there was a thick fog off the east

Starting point is 00:06:58 coast. And so the captains of the USS Nantucket and the USS Monroe, they had no idea that they were about to collide. The Nantucket, it slammed into the side of the Monroe. It rolled the Monroe over, and it ended up leaving 32 men, eight women, and one child dead. And they were. said. Afterward, there was an investigation, and it was discovered that the captain of the Nantucket, he'd failed to get his compass calibrated. He thought at the time that his compass was just fine. It was seaworthy. It wasn't a big deal. That's what most captains did. But he was wrong. His miscalibrated compass caused him to sail out of his shipping lane and hit the Monroe. grow. When our hearts are calibrated to delight in the wrong things, we often think we'll be just

Starting point is 00:07:52 fine. It's not that bad. Everybody else does it. It's not that big of a deal. But give it enough time. And there's always a crash. We can't see through the fog of life. We don't know what's going to happen next. We often don't even know what we're doing. And so the best tool we can have to navigate our way through life, it's a heart calibrated to delight in the right things. It's a heart calibrated to the truth, a heart calibrated to Jesus, a heart calibrated to love. That's the only way that we can avoid harming others. And that's why love does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth. Today, look at your life choices and take an inventory of your delight. Have you allowed your heart to be calibrated to evil, even ever so slightly?

Starting point is 00:08:52 Well, if so, and it's probably true of all of us in different ways, confess those areas to God. And then ask Jesus to recalibrate your heart. Ask him to give you a deeper, superior delight in him. ask him to give you a deeper, superior, passion for him so that your heart isn't calibrated to evil, so that your heart is calibrated to love. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content,

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Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Evil Love | Redefining Love (1 Cor. 13)

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