The Church of Eleven22 - S01 E05 - Love

Episode Date: March 23, 2020

As followers of Christ, we’re called to “love one another.” But what does this look like? Here Pastor Joby shares the attributes of a love that’s authentic, sacrificial and intentional. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. — 1 Corinthians 13:13

Hey, church family, welcome back to Devo Time. As we let you know, we're going to be connecting every night or day or whenever you want to watch it. But on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, you will be able to watch our services in their entirety. If you miss the actual service times, which are listed on the website, then in the in-between times, you can watch the rebroadcast. And then on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights at 8 o'clock, and then a bunch of other times. we'll just be walking through the Word of God and at the live times you will be able to interact with some of our pastors and staff

so if you need something like a prayer request just click the button or if you have a comment or you have a need if you would just let us know we want to be here for you. So one of the things I was thinking about is we have now entered this time in our current reality where we are together a lot.

Gretchen and I officially became homeschool parents. It's mostly her, not me. And to all you homeschool mamas, God bless your ministry, because I can tell you this, I'm a child of God, but I am not a homeschool teacher. I don't know if our kids are going to do very well. Gretchen's doing a great job. But what begins to happen when any parts come together, think about like an engine. When an engine cranks up, there's a bunch of moving parts in the engine.

And when parts move together, they create full. friction, and where there is friction, there is heat, and if you get too much heat and too much friction, then the whole engine will break down. Now, I'm not just describing an engine. For a lot of us, I'm describing our family in this season when all of us are not used to being together as much as we are. Well, the good news is that Paul, inspired by the Spirit of God, knew that this is how relationships work. So if you got your Bible, 1 Corinthians, chapter 3.5. 13. Now you may know 1 Corinthians 13 has the love chapter and it is but I want to put it in context a little bit. In 1 Corinthians chapter 12, Paul is talking to the church at Corinth and quite honestly they were

it was a train wreck. They couldn't do anything right. They were they were rude to one another. They couldn't do communion right. People were getting drunk on communion. People were sleeping with each other's spouses and it was just it was a train wreck. There were all of these individual people together rubbing up, sometimes literally, rubbing up against each other and all of this friction happened which created heat and then they hated each other, they wanted to sue each other, they were breaking down, it wasn't going okay. So in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, Paul says that the church is like one body with many parts. Jesus is our head and then we are all connected to this body. So we as a church are one body, many parts.

And then in chapter 14, what he is going to do is he is going to give us direction in regards to how we use our gifts and what weekend worship services ought to look like. And right in the middle of that is 1 Corinthians 13. And here's what I think 1 Corinthians 13, the Love chapter is. I think love described in 1 Corinthians 13 is like the most. motor oil to the engine of relationships. It's like in my house now. We're used to sending our kids to school.

I'm used to traveling a lot, being gone a lot, and now here we are altogether seemingly all the time, and there's a lot of friction. And the motor oil to make sure that that friction doesn't create heat and break us down is love. So, Church, the way we're going to make it through this is that we're going to love one another. the Bible says beloved let us love one another for love is of God and whoever loves knows God and is born of God

but whoever does not love does not know God now I think everybody that believes in Jesus and even most people that don't when they hear verses about love like that they would agree wholeheartedly but what Paul does for us in 1st Corinthians chapter 13 is he helps us understand that love is a theological concept, that love is not an idea, that love is not an ui-gooing feeling, that love is not something you fall into and fall out of. But love is something that we do towards one another. First Corinthians 13 says this, if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clinging symbol. 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 I have and if I deliver up my body to be burned but have not love, I gain nothing. Paul says without love, I have nothing, I am nothing, I gain nothing. Now again, at the philosophical level, I think we would all have. agree with this. And in fact, if you gave yourself a grade on how well do you love so far with this description, I think you would say, I get an A plus. Because a lot of times when we think about love or when we talk about love, what we do is we grade ourselves based on our intentions. Like if you

were to ask me, do you love your children? I'm obsessed with my kids. I love them. I mean, from the moment I met them, now they aggravate me like nobody. He's. else. But I'm telling you, Joseph Perry Martin the fourth man, I see that little boy and he's growing up into a young man. He set a new Max Bitch Press last night. We're pumped. We're high-fiving. We played virtual ping pong against each other today and he beat me and I love him like in here. Like I have these uigui feelings towards him as my son. And when you talk about Reagan Capri, my little girl, she got a little freaked out last night. She was watching some news with us. And so she asked me, but I lay down in the bed with her, and so I did,

and I just laid there, and she put her little 10-year-old blonde head on my chest, and then one of our puppies climbed up in the bed with us, and I laid there, and I felt all this kind of stirring. And if you ask me if I love my wife, man, I love her so much, if I look at her in her face and I just start telling her too much, I'm telling you, I'll start crying. It's crazy. The problem with that is when it comes to love,

most of us judge our intentions, and we judge everybody else's actions. So what Paul does here now is he moves from the philosophical and the theological into the practical. And he starts saying, this is what love is. So when we're commanded to love one another, starting with the people that we're hanging out with in our own homes, he says this is what it looks like.

You see, a few years ago I taught on this passage and I had to call Gretchen and say, hey, I'm really sorry. I love you, but I don't think I'm loving you. she's like, what are you me? And I said, well, let's start right here. The Bible says love is patient and kind. So what do you think?

And she looked at me and she said, what else does it say? Because I have been described as a lot of things, but patient and kind are typically not very high on the list. And the problem is, is that a lot of times what we try to do if we're not these loving things is we try to abdicate responsibility and blame it on like a personality type

or blame it on our upbringing, which essentially sometimes, look, I'm pro personality type, all that stuff. But oftentimes we, essentially what we're doing is we're blaming God. Well, I'm just not a patient person and I'm just not a kind person that doesn't come to me naturally.

And what we're saying is God, when you made me, you didn't make me right. but the reality is is the Bible says that God is love and if we are children of God if we've surrendered our life to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and we have been we have been indwelt by His Holy Spirit so the very spirit of God lives in us and the Bible says God is love therefore God love lives in us so somewhere deep down in there we have these attributes we're just keeping them from showing themselves so let me ask you with your kids, with your spouse this week, are you patient? Are you kind?

Think about how patient the Lord is with me and you. Don't you get aggravated when you have to tell your kids the same thing over and over and over and over and over? Aren't you glad that God doesn't get aggravated with us because he always has to tell us the same things over and over and over and over and when you lose it with your kids or when you lose it with your spouse and you are unkind to them. Aren't you so glad that God is not losing on us? So it says love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy or boast. You see when you love when you envy someone, it means that you look at them and essentially it's an affront against God. So God, you did this wrong. You gave her too much and me not enough. And that's not love. Because love essentially is like

lifting other people up, even at expense to yourself. Envy is the exact opposite of that. And then boasting is looking at yourself and taking credit for what God has given you. And that's not love. It goes on to say love is not arrogant or rude. You see, arrogance is thinking that you're better than someone else. And being rude is treating somebody that way. Now again, I don't know a lot of people that think they're rude. But I know a lot of people that get really put off when they don't get treated the way they think they ought to be treated. And love doesn't act that way. It says love does not insist on its own way.

So let me ask you, does it always have to go your way? Listen, I'm telling you, I am not doing very good at this list so far. Like if I were to just use this as a base-level grading system on how, am I doing towards those that I feel like I love the most. I am not doing very well because I am arrogant. I can be very rude. I always get my way. It goes on to say it's not irritable. Let me ask you, like with all this time together with your family, are you easily irritated? Because love just doesn't do that. You see, oftentimes when we are irritable, it's because we've got some kind of, there's something deeper there. It's like a wound. Like if you have a wound,

and it heals up, you get a scar, and if somebody bumps into the scar, no problem. But if you have a wound that does not rightly heal, and it continues to be an open wound, and something bumps into that, you will have a disproportionate amount of emotion that comes out. That's called irritability. And there's something deeper there. There's a problem, and he says, love doesn't act that way. Love is not irritable or resentful. The way the NIV says it is this, love keeps no record of wrong.

The Greek word for resentful or record of wrong is logizomai from the core word logos, which means word. Here's what this means, that love does not keep a checklist of all the wrong things, the one that you love has done, and love doesn't even talk about it. You see, so like when you get aggravated, do you get historical and bring up all the times the person that has let you down? Well, just love doesn't do that. Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. and then this is how he finishes up this paragraph. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. 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, and when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. Let me talk to the men real quick. You see, oftentimes we think we're just tough. We think

we're just leaders. We just make decisions. We get stuff done. And we're irritable. We have to have our own way. We're arrogant. We're rude. We're not very patient. We're not very kind. And what the Bible would say is, bro, you're not being tough. You're being like a toddler. And if you are a follower of and if the love of God lives in you, then it's time to put away those childish ways, and it's time to grow up, act like a man, and do everything in love. He goes on to say,

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, hope, and love abide. These three, but the greatest of these is love. You know why love is the greatest? it's because love is the only one of these that will be eternal.

Here's what I mean. When perfection comes, when we're in heaven with God, there will be no faith because you'll just, you don't have to believe anything. Nobody's going to come up to you in heaven and be like, do you believe in Jesus? He'd be like, well, he's sitting right there. I mean, there's no faith. Then you just have sight.

It's there. It's just fact. And there's no hope. Hope is when you long for something to come that's not here yet. And so you will be experiencing what you have been hoping and longing for, but love will remain. Now, I dare you to take 1st Corinthians 13,

starting in verse 4 and just ask yourself, just give yourself a grade, A, B, F, how am I doing in regards to being these things, loving towards the people that I say that I love? And if you're like me, the first thing you probably need to do is go to your family, confess, and repent. But whatever you do, know this, that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ,

Jesus. And what I don't want you to do is just to try to get out there and try harder and do better, because, you know what, that will fail, but love never fails. You see, the key to understanding how we love one another is to understand how Christ first loved us. And that Christ loved us with patience and kindness. He did not have to have his own way. He was not resentful. He was not irritable. He bore all things, including our very own sin to the cross. He endured all things, and he will never fail. And that same Christ that loved us enough to lay his life down for us, lives in us. So Church of 1122, empowered by the Spirit, under the authority of the Word of God, from the love of the Heavenly Father and through the blood of Jesus, may you and I, starting with those

in our family, particularly in this time. May we love, not just feel it, but may we love one another. Would you pray with me? Dear Father in heaven, Lord, we thank you and we praise you that we can love because you first loved us. And God, we thank you that this is love, not that we love you, but you loved us and sent your son as the propitiation for our sin. And God, may your love towards us overflow in our lives to the point where it just spills out on everyone else. God, may we not just love and word and deep, but may we love in action. May we be patient and kind and tender. May we take our cues from Jesus.

May we be sensitive to the nudging of the Holy Spirit. And God, may you use this season where a lot of us are together a lot more than we're used to. And may we abound in your love. towards one another. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.