Biblical Love vs. Secular Love

Good morning, we, I would like you to this week to remember to pray for this team that's going to Mexico. As always, first Thessalonians Paul when he wrote back to the Thessalonikans after taking the gospel there and then a short time later wanting to come back, because of course he had been basically run out of town. He wanted to get back to them and to establish them and he had spent others to go back and some remain there. And when he wrote to them, he said, every time I've tried to return to you, Satan has hindered us and kept us from coming to you and ministering to you. And I like you to take seriously what the New Testament says that Satan is always trying to obstruct the way of those who are involved in ministry.

And when you plan to go on a trip like this to do ministry, you will discover that there are all kinds of things that come up that to undermine this work. And several things have happened. I want you to pray for these people, pray for their help and their strength and their healing and all kinds of things. And as they get closer and closer, they're very excited about going. And they're so glad to drop out for one reason or another, but there's a great core people that are going. And yet they all, almost every one of those families, face some great challenges in doing this. So please pray for them and pray for them continually that God would empower, enable them, remove the obstacles and get them down there to do this work.

And we will all see, I think, great benefits from it in all kinds of ways. So please pray for them. Today we want to continue what we were talking about last week. Last week we talked about the centrally personal relationships, the fact that love in the Bible and the New Testament especially, we were told that love is a summary that all the scriptures speak of. In fact, it is the intention of God's law. All of his commandments can be summed up. Jesus said in this that you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbors yourself. And so our love for each other, and this is primarily seen in personal relationships, this is the fulfillment of the law.

And it's the fulfillment of the will and purpose of God in our lives and his purpose of glorifying its son in this world. The way that God glorifies his son primarily in this world is when we experience what Jesus has called us to do that is to love one another the way Christ has loved us. So love is the sum of the intention of the scriptures and the commandments of God and love is fulfilled in relationships. And so we begin to look at this and I want to look at another passage today. And that is 1 Corinthians chapter 13 that you heard read this morning. Turn there please. And 1 Corinthians 13 and probably a good number of you have this passage read at your wedding. I'm sure how many ladies remember this passage was read at your wedding.

Any of you? Wow. Okay. How many men remember? Now that's surprising. But I'm proud of you guys, you two. 1 Corinthians 13 describes love. It's interesting that it describes it both positively and negatively, but primarily it comes from a negative perspective because it was exactly what they were lacking in the church at Corinth. And so as Paul is writing to them, he's concerned about them. You notice he says that by speaking the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging symbol. The church at Corinth loves spirit manifestations. They love for things to get exciting in their services. They love people speaking in tongues, people giving words of prophecy, words of knowledge, words of wisdom, spiritual manifestations of all kinds.

And yet Paul says, even though there are all these spiritual manifestations in the church, he says to them, if this is all you have, but you do not have love, then you are nothing. In other words, religious ecstasy. Having a deep religious experience that touches you, an altered state of consciousness, maybe as meaningless as a clanging gong, Paul says. It may be no more significant than that that you feel something very deeply if you do not have love. In other words, if all of your spiritual experiences don't lead you down this path of obeying the commandment of Christ that we would love one another as he has loved us, then he says it is of no value at all. And then he says in verse two, if I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all of knowledge, and if I have faith that can move mountains but have not love, I am nothing.

Interesting because so many of us are so interested in having a deep sense of insight into the word of God and the things of God and the mysteries of God. And Paul says, even if you have the gift of prophecy, that is you are channeled through which God's revelation comes to God's people. Or even if you have the gift of wisdom and you can understand how that truth is applied to life, to life, or if you have the gift of knowledge to understand the deep mysteries of God as they did in the early church. He said, even if you have this kind of insight, if you have deep insight, but it fails to lead to love, then it is nothing. I have attended six seminaries to one degree or another. And one of the things I have noticed about seminary students is it happens almost all of them.

At least early on in their seminary experience, that we believe that research is the ultimate end of a minister of the gospel. And in fact, many of them use research to avoid personal relationships. Some of the most boring people you will ever meet is in a seminary. Students in a seminary, it is an amazing thing what they go through. And usually it isn't until they have been out of seminary for some time that they grow out of the myth that they develop during those years. But what Paul is saying here is that knowledge of any kind that does not lead you to love is worthless. Paul says a few chapters before this knowledge pumps up, but love builds up. Now he doesn't diminish the importance of knowledge.

He just says knowledge is a means to the end of loving God and his people. It's not an end. It's a means to an end. And we think that we have arrived because we know something. Paul says we are greatly mistaken. God doesn't live. The center of God's universe is not in the library. It's not in the theological library. One of the greatest theological libraries in this country, in the world, in fact, is in Berkeley at the Graduate Theological Union. It's an amazing library. Amazing number of books and variety of books. It's about eight or nine different seminaries that have gone together and they share a common library. And it's interesting that library from the early days of those schools, they were most of them.

Several of them were fairly conservative. And so you got all kinds of books. They're all liberal now. There's not one conservative school in that consortium. But that library is amazing. And some people think, some seminary students think that God lives in the library. That's where the Holy of Holy fits. But it's not. Because what God gives you knowledge for, what he gives you understanding for is to lead you to love. And then Paul says if he's also in the same verse, if I have faith, they can move mountains. Now all of us understand that faith is at the center of the Christian life. And yet Paul says that if you have faith without love, you are nothing. Now Paul, in Galatians chapter 5, verse 6, he says to the Galatians, in Christ, neither circumcision nor un-circumcision, participating in this right, the seal of the Old Covenant, he says, is nothing.

It doesn't matter. One way or the other, whether you're circumcised or un-circumcised, he says, what matters is this. Faith working through love. And here the same apostle says that faith without love is nothing. Now that's an amazing thing, isn't it? You can have great confidence about the work of God, about some particular part of God's purpose being involved in a ministry and yet without love, he says it is nothing. You may wonder how could it be possible to have faith without love? Well, it's not possible to have the right kind of faith, but it is very possible to think you have great faith without love. And what Paul says is that example, that condition leaves you with nothing that profits.

And then he says in verse 3, if I give all I possess to the poor, and I surrender my body to the flames, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Some of you here, I noticed, a few of you here, are old enough to remember watching television in the late 60s, early 70s. And one of the most vivid images that I can remember ever seen was a Buddhist monk on the streets of Saigon burning himself to death. In fact, I think it happened several times where I remember that image on TV. It was an amazing thing. Covered himself with gasoline, lit himself, and was consumed right there as you watched. Now, that's commitment. But Paul says you can have that kind of commitment. You can be willing to have your body burned for a cause.

You can be so committed, so devoted to a cause. And yet, he says without love, even fanatical devotion may be far from the heart of God. Because without love, even devotion to a cause even if it's a Christian cause is nothing. In other words, Paul is driving home to their hearts and ours. But at the center of everything that God's doing in our lives is to bring us to the place where we love the way Christ loves. Now, this is a special problem among us as Americans. In fact, I want to show you a couple of statistics. We have a huge problem in our culture and our society about developing deep lasting quality relationships. As of 1984, I think that's the right date, 1994, most people believe this is a quote out of virtual America, another book written by Barna.

Most people believe it is getting harder to develop strong, meaningful friendships in our culture. In other words, all the development of technology, the advancement in every way are our economy, all the pressures that we experience in every kind of way lead us to the place. In fact, we are moving further and further into this where it becomes more and more difficult to develop real, genuine, lasting, devoted relationships with one another. The way you can see this primarily, and one of the easiest ways to measure it in any culture is the divorce rate. The divorce rate in United States is the highest in the world. In fact, you notice in that old chart there, it has grown, but then there was a leveling off in the 90s.

And that's an interesting thing. It stabilizes literally because of cohabitation and reduction in marriages. The reason there aren't more divorces is because there are fewer marriages. More and more people are simply living together. Half of all marriages in the United States will fail, the bottom line. Think of that. Half of all the marriages that are made in the United States are going to fail. And what the answer that the culture has approached this with is simply living together. Cohabitation, as it's called, and a study by John Hopkins hospital in Wisconsin. This is the result of that study. It says cohabitating unions are much less stable than unions that begin as marriages. And if you look at this little pie chart, what it is saying is that 40% of all cohabitating relationships, those relationships where people begin by just living together outside the marriage covenant.

And they think, because marriage failed with the previous generation, why should we get married? We should live together for a while and develop some capacity to know how to get along and then if it works out, we'll get married. 40% of those relationships failed before marriage. 45% fail after marriage. Only 15% imagine this. 15% of relationships that begin as what the world calls cohabitation, that is union outside the marriage bond, ends in dissolution. It doesn't continue. Now we all, we face this. There's, I doubt if there's anybody in this room who hasn't been touched by divorce in one way or another, either directly or indirectly. And you know the pain and you know the results. You know the devastation that it brings.

Now, God has answers to this. It's obvious there is a problem in our culture and even in the church. If you aren't aware of it, the divorce rate in the church is as high as it is outside the church. In fact, some segments of the church, in some parts of the country, there are more divorces in the church than there are in the world. The reason for that is people in the church tend to get married. They don't simply live together. But their rate of success in staying together for life is as bad statistically as the world. Now I think the reason for that is is that we don't turn to God for the answers because God has the answers. God has given us principles. And some of us, we all know that marriage is a great, great challenge.

I've been married 37 years, 37 years. I think that's right. 37 years. Maybe 38. Something like that. But it's way up there. And it's older than I, longer than I actually feel old. But and it's hard, isn't it? It's hard. It's a difficult, it's a difficult assignment to love someone for life, to be committed to them. Now let me show you the principles that we find in Scripture, God's principles for having the kind of relationship that God has called us to. What is his answer to our relational need? In John chapter 15 in the Upper Room Discourse, when Jesus is speaking and teaching his disciples, just before he's going to be arrested, he begins to talk to them about things that are greatly significant for them.

He says to them, I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. In other words, that you would have profound, deep, lasting joy. My command is this. Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this that he laid down his life for his friends. Jesus claims this, if we learn to love his way, we will experience profound joy. He says that the thing that leads to deep, continuous, life pervasive joy is to love the way he loves. Now think about our own assumptions as a people. I'm not accusing you of this in particular, but it's certainly true in my heart at times, and I'm sure it's true in your heart at times, and it's true among the people that we live around and live with.

Our assumption is this, that I'll have joy if I acquire certain things, if I experience certain things, if I achieve certain things, I will have joy. Different phases of your life, you tend to think in these ways. For example, when you're very young, you tend to think if I can achieve certain things, then I'll be happy. If I get a degree, if I get a certain kind of career, if I achieve this certain thing in my life, then I can have joy and deep happiness. And then a little later, and maybe it's sometimes this comes first, you begin to think, if I could just experience certain things, then I could have real joy. In fact, in our culture, we are driven by experience, driven by the desire for pleasure and entertainment.

That's why we have such trouble with people who are addicted to drugs and sex and all illicit sex and all those kinds of things. It's because we think by acquiring certain things, by having the right car, the right home, the right furniture, the right setting in life that I can have joy. But Jesus claims something completely different. Jesus claims that joy comes through loving people the way he loved us. And how did he love us? Well, he came to lay down his life for his friends, so that we could come to God just as we are in faith, believing on what he has done on the cross, following on him for mercy and finding mercy in him. He did that for us, this great manifestation of life. The book of Hebrew says that even though he despised the cross, even though he looked at it and he despised that experience of being separated from the Father, of being hung on a cross, and imagine what it was he went through as the Son of God, the Creator and Sustainer of All Things.

He is the second person of the Trinity. And according to the Bible, it was the second person of the Trinity who spoke everything into existence. The Creator and Sustainer of All Things comes into the world, humbles himself, is placed on a cross, stripped naked before all those that looked on, beaten to the point where Isaiah says you could hardly recognize him as being a man. And God's judgment upon my sins was poured out upon him. Hebrew says the reason he could do that, though he despised the experience. It was because of the joy set before him. The joy set before him. And now he tells us, here is the key to joy. And notice his command. His command is love each other as I have loved you. Love each other as I have loved you.

Not just love each other. We could all claim that we love one another. It's so easy to say to somebody, you know, I really love you. But could you say to somebody from your heart, I love you the same way Christ has loved me. Because he tells us in the following paragraph that he lays down his life for his prince. This is the measure of the love that he is commanding us to have. This is how we are to fulfill the commandment, to lay down our lives for one another. The world says that the key to emotional health, the key to psychological joy, the key to being really happy in this life is to find some people who esteem you and love you and hang out with those people. That is literally what we are told in this world that you have to do if you're going to be happy.

You're going to have to get rid of those people in your life who don't esteem you, who don't love you. We don't show you that they love you and find some people who do. This is why it's so easy in this world for people to say, yes, you ought to abandon that relationship, that marriage, you ought to abandon your parents because they don't esteem you the way you need to be esteemed and love. And you need to find you somebody who will love you and then you can be happy. Your love cup is empty. You need to have it filled. Find someone who will fill your love cup and then you can be happy. Jesus says, find someone to love and then love them to the point that you're willing to lay down your life for them.

That's the key to joy. Some of you are experiencing that right now in your life. That you're experiencing a level of joy you've never had before. Some of you new parents, for example, or you newlyweds, you've entered into a relationship where you find it so easy to love that person. Loving a baby is a wonderful thing when a new baby comes into the family and they haven't done anything wrong yet. I mean, they mess their divers and they cry and disturb the morning, Sunday morning service, most kind of things. There's no big deal. And you can just love them so easy and you can be willing to lay down your life and you feel like you could die for them. You feel like you could really die for them. It fills your heart with such joy.

It's an amazing thing, isn't it? Isn't it joyful to love somebody like that? An unconditional way. You're not looking for anything from them. You just love them. This is what Jesus says is the source of real joy in life. And we might ask, and this is what people ask. This is what people are afraid of. If you were to buy into this kind of mindset, this kind of, that Jesus is commanding here, you have to say, wait a minute, what about my needs? What about my needs? Who's going to meet my needs? If all I do is love somebody else and lay down my life for them, who's going to meet my needs? I want to be depleted. You guys put me in a hospital. Well, the answer to that is God says, I'll take care of that.

I will take care of that. You see, that's how it works. And that's what Jesus is promising us, is if we obey His commandment, He will empower us to obey it. He'll fill us up with what we need to love the way that He loves. And so this is the issue. This is really the basic issue. Either we accept our culture view that the key is to find someone to love me, or we accept the word of Jesus in this passage, that the key is to sacrifice myself for others. That's the key to happiness. That's the key to joy. Will I believe the world? Or will I believe Jesus? You know, this Christian life stuff is a lot more than having a bumper sticker on your car. It really is. It's more than wearing a little cross on your neck and putting a fish on your car.

It's obeying the commandments of Jesus. And you know what the problem with obeying the commandments of Jesus is? They seem absolutely impossible. One of the approaches that some people take is they simply water them down, and they interpret them in such a way that they're not near as drastic as they seem. Jesus says, my wisdom is, if you want joy, then you find someone to love the God's place in your life, and you love them, and you lay down your life of them. And so then the question becomes, will I embrace his wisdom? Or will I embrace the world's wisdom? The wisdom of Jesus flies in the face of the wisdom of this world. According to the world, the key to joy is receiving love from others. It's having them love you, finding someone who will love you, who will treat you as though you're worth something, to fill you up.

Jesus says the key to joy is to victoriously give love to others. Now, he assumes what we talked about last week that you have come to experience the reality of being loved by God, the way that it's described in the Bible. Romans chapter 5, that you've experienced the new birth, and the spirit has come in, and he has gushed forth the love of God in your heart, and that has become a profound, deep understanding that you are loved by God as a father who calls you his son or daughter. That he loves you so deeply, that he was willing to give up the sun for you, and based on the strength of that, the fullness of that, that you have what Jesus offers in John 7, that you drink from him and out of your bell rivers of living water, and you find someone that Jesus puts in your life to victoriously give love to in a self-sacrificing way.

Now, this is a radical suggestion that Jesus is, it's really not a suggestion, it's a command, but it's a radical suggestion to tell somebody, this is a way to find joy, because it's radically different from radically different focus from what the world says you must focus on. Some of you are here this morning, your heart's broken or you're going through a very difficult time, and just stop and think about what is it that's causing you to be sad? What is it that's causing your heart to be broken? Is it because you're not receiving what you want to receive from someone? Jesus says in John 17, 33, whoever seeks to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it. It's by giving that you receive, he says, by laying down your life, by giving your heart will be filled with joy.

So that's the wisdom of Jesus, what you need today is to decide which path you're going to go down, we have to decide that every day, am I going to go down the path of the wisdom of Jesus, or am I going to go down the path of the wisdom of this world? Now, I have no doubt about it, this is a struggle, there is not any doubt about it, it's a struggle with me, and it's a struggle with hundreds of people that I've met with over the last 20 plus years. I've met with so many couples who've come in with great, great difficulties in their life, and they cannot figure out how to keep from getting a divorce, they can't figure out how they're ever going to make it, because they've come to the place where they just don't love each other, and without exception, and I mean this, without exception, and at first I couldn't figure it out, I couldn't figure out what was it, I remember one time meeting with a couple, and this woman was so overwhelmed with sadness and grief, she literally fell in the floor of my office where their husband sitting right there on her knees and hands, and wept convulsively, because she was so unhappy with him.

And I want to be honest with you, the things that disturbed her about him was he wasn't good around the house, he didn't fix things that were broken, he didn't show her the kind of affection that she felt she wanted, and the poor man sat there, totally defeated, and saying, I'm doing everything I know, I'll do anything you tell me, because I love her with all my heart, but it wasn't enough, you know what her problem was? Her problem was she was going down the wrong path, she thought her joy was going to come from being loved perfectly, and if I was to say this morning, I would like every man in this room who is not qualified to love his wife perfectly to leave the room, we would only have ladies in here, because there aren't any of us like that, and so if a woman is looking for the source of her joy to be to have the kind of husband who can love perfectly, she is in big trouble, she will never find joy, but the wisdom of Jesus is, here is the path to joy, and it's ironic, it's an ironic thing, because the further I go down the path of seeking love from others, as a source of my joy, the more disappointed I'm going to be.

Now when you're 16, there's hope. But I can tell you, about 38, 39, 40 right in there, you finally come to the realization, you stop lying to yourself, I am never going to find the kind of love that's going to make me happy, if that is the basis of me being happy, it's finding someone, you can love me this way. The more disappointment, the more dissatisfaction, the more joylessness you experience when you go down that path. And the more I seek to give love, the more I learn how and mature in this ability to love people, to see people as opportunities, to lay down my life for and to love them, the more joy I have. Happy as people I know, the happiest people I know are people who are constantly giving themselves away.

Some of them are rich, some of them are poor, some are in the middle, but they have this common characteristic, they love to lay down their lives for other people. Now these two paths are diametrically opposed, you can't go down both at the same time, sometimes we try, sometimes we, you know, it's like, you know, I want to sacrifice for you, but I just want to know that you're also willing to sacrifice for me. I sacrificed for you last week, now I need you to sacrifice for me this week. But see, we're asking the wrong kind of question, we're deluded, let's look at the nature of this love. In 1 Corinthians 13, he says in verse 4, love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, it is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no records of wrong, love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth, bears all things, believes all things, always hopes, always perseveres.

Now notice this, first of all he says, love is patient, inpatient love is demanding love. That's what inpatient love is. Someone has said, love can always wait to give, but lust can never wait to take. Isn't that true? You see the nature of the kind of love that Jesus is calling us to have for one another, the kind of love he's loved us with is patient love, it's not inpatient, it's not demanding, it doesn't have to have instant gratification. Our culture is into this up to its neck, it's all around us, instant gratification. If you can put it in the needles, stick it your arm, the drive through window, drugs, sex, whatever it is that will give me pleasure, I have to have it and I have to have it now.

There's a book written by Neil Postman called Amusing Ourself to Death that's fairly dated book now, it was written a couple decades ago, but you ought to read it about our culture and the path that we have gone down. It's much worse now, but the reason for that is that we demand instant gratification. That's why love is so difficult. The love, the way God has called us to love, the way Christ has called us to love, is not the kind of love that demands instant gratification. I think young couples who are getting ready to get married when you counsel them in premarital counseling, what you should do is tell them that there's about a 90% chance that if you follow the plan and purpose of God, you stay in this union for life as God has called you to, that there's coming a day when probably the husband is going to get sick and he's going to become totally disabled and you're going to have to take care of every need he has.

Are you willing to do that? Are you willing to take care of every need he has, as though he were a little baby? Are you willing to love him in that way? You see, love has the kind of quality to it, the love of Jesus Christ, has the quality to it that it is patient, it puts up with, it keeps its boiling point a long ways off. And then he says that love is kind, the unkind, the opposite of kind is unkind, unkind means to be mean or fierce or dangerous. One of the descriptions that Jesus gives them himself in Matthew 11 is, I am meek and lowly and humble in heart. That description means that's the kind of person that if you're a big gathering, people are around and you know, some people, they're just a life of the party and they're great.

I love that people like that around. The life of the party and everybody's attention is on them all the time. Jesus wouldn't be like that. His meek and lowly and humble in heart and love, the kind of love that he gives is not unkind, it's not mean, it's not fierce. You know, there are some of you in this room, I have no doubt because I think it's such a common thing. There are some of you in this room who you have loved ones who are afraid of you because you're fierce anger, you're explosions, you're violence and the way you hurt people when you get angry, strike out of them, insult them. That is the exact opposite of the kind of love that he's called us to have. We ought to have a love that is kind.

Christ's love encourages us not to be turned inward but to be turned outward. It encourages people to draw near. Jesus loves it such a way that people were drawn to him. Little children came to Jesus. Have you noticed that children are not drawn to angry or withdrawn people? Judy's father, my wife's father, my father-in-law, he was the kind of guy that people were so drawn to him because he was such an open, loving, kind man and little kids just gravitated to him. My kids loved him. My dad was like that too. This kind of love that Jesus is calling us to is a love that is kind. It's not fierce, it's not explosive, it's kind. And then he says it is not jealous, that is it is not possessive and controlling.

It doesn't, it's not the kind of love that says you can only love me and you can only find pleasure in me and that narrows a person's life down to just them. Have you noticed that the love of Christ frees you up to love other people? It doesn't hamper you from having more people in your life. It doesn't know you down, it expands you and opens you up. And some people they think what they have is love but it's not this kind of love. You know, I don't want you to have any happiness apart from me. The jealous of everything, that's a silk, a sick and self-centered kind of love. Christ loves, that's our hearts free to receive love and to love others. And then he says that love is not self-promoting, it does not boast.

It doesn't use people to glorify itself in other words. It doesn't enter into relationships for self-aggrandizement. It in fact, he says it is self-effacing, it's not proud. It doesn't want itself but it has a kind of humility. And then he says love is not rude, that is it is not insensitive. I think this is really a significant characteristic of the kind of love that Christ has called us to, the kind of love he showed. If you notice, if you agree through the gospels and you see the kind of interaction that Jesus had with people, he was an incredibly sensitive man. He was strong and powerful, but he was incredibly sensitive to people and their needs. When the first miracle he performs in public is that the wedding of Cain of Galilee in response to a need that that couple had, they've invited all our friends in the community to their wedding and they're having a time of great rejoicing.

And because of poor planning, they run out of wine. Now you have to understand, it's much different. We had a meal here one time, a couple years ago, we ran out of food and we had guests, I had a guest speaker coming, his whole family was here and we didn't have food. All the food was gone and we all felt so bad. It was a hundred times worse than that in this wedding, in the wedding of Cain of Galilee. To invite all your friends and family and then to run out of wine. Jesus showed mercy not only did he demonstrate his power in that miracle, but he demonstrated great compassion. He was very sensitive. Love is sensitive. The first 17 says, if we say that we love and we have a brother, sister comes to us and they have needs.

He calls it the needs of life there, earthly needs, needs in order to sustain life. They need food, they need clothes, they need shelter or some kind. And we close our heart to them. That is, quite literally, in the original language, it says we close up our bowels. We refuse to be touched. We refuse to experience any emotion in regards to what their needs are. Then he said, how can we say that we really love them? That's not love because love has an emotional component to it. It is sensitive. There is a sensitivity to it. And he says it is also sacrificial. It is not self-seeking, it is sacrificial. It lays down its life. Jesus laid down his life and that is what he calls us to do, to lay down our life.

And then this is what follows. In fact, I think you have to tie these two things together very closely to understand. He says it is not easily angered. Not easily angered. This follows from being self-sacrificial. What a Christian spite about. Most of you have been Christians long enough that you have been in churches where there have been fights. I haven't heard of any fights in our church but I am sure there have been some small skirmishes. James forces among believers we have these wars, battles, skirmishes. What are they about? Are they about what Jesus is telling us to do here about serving one another? Are the fights you hear about as well? I want to serve you. Oh no, no, no, it is my turn.

I am going to serve you. No, I am going to serve you. Is that the kind of fights? No. James forces, the kind of fights you have in the churches. I want to have my desire fulfilled and you are standing in my way. I want things to go this way and you are standing in my way. That is the kind of things we fight over. He says that if we are sacrificial in our love then we will not, that kind of love will not be easily angered. Now notice it doesn't say never, it doesn't say it won't be angered at all. There will be anger. There is time we should be angry. Paul commands us to be angry. Ephesians chapter 4 when it says be angry and do not sin. That first phrase there be angry is an imperative. It means you should get angry but don't sin in your anger.

It is sin. There are many ways you can sin an anger. In fact, it is very easy for us to sin. It is hard for us not to sin when we get angry. But there are times to be angry. Our problem is we get angry about the wrong things. Matthew 18 verse 15 it says we should do this. If someone sins against us, a sin that is harmful to them, we realize this is a real sin and it is doing damage to them because of this sin. For example, if you hear that somebody slandering you, I know the temptation is that you want to go snuff it out. Go over and tell them off and tell them to stop slandering you. But if you love them the way Christ loves them, you know that them slandering you does great damage to them and you need to love your brother or sister.

So Jesus says in Matthew 18 verse 15 following when someone sins against you, go to them and speak to them in private about the sin. Now there is we have to care enough for each other. That we don't let these things kind of pass because we love the person who is falling into the trap. The problem is 1918 it says discipline your son while there is hope and do not desire his death. The implication is if you don't discipline your son, you desire his death. The thing is true in all our relationships. If I let you go down a path of sin and don't do the best I can for you to open your eyes and see what you are doing and see where you are going. I am not loving you the way Christ has called me to love you.

He goes on. He says it keeps no record of wrongs. How are you? It keeps no records of wrongs. I want to drive this home to your heart because if you are keeping any record of wrongs regarding me, I want to tell you based on the word of God today, you need to get rid of the record. You need to burn the record. You are the story about the guy who told this past. He says you know my problem is every time my wife gets mad at me, she gets historical. And he said I think you mean hysterical. He says no, I mean historical. She starts bringing up every bad thing I have ever done to her over the last 10 years. Love does not keep accounts. That is what this phrase means. It does not reckon evil. That is it does not keep an account of evil.

J. Adams claims in one of his books, and I believe that he is not a liar, that he had a couple come in for counseling. J. Adams is a Christian counselor. He had someone come in for counseling one time, and he said the woman pulled out of this great big bag she carried. You know one of them great big bags. Some ladies carry like a huge expandable briefcase. He says she pulled out a binder. That was three inches thick and she put it on the desk when he asked what's the problem. She pulled the binder out later on the desk. Here is the problem. Here is 22 years of violations. Well, what Paul says here is that love does not keep a record of wrongs. It forgives. That's what forgiveness is. That doesn't mean you can never remember.

It's like I don't remember that. You may remember, but you don't keep a record. You don't try to remember. You send it away. You truly forgive. Then he says in verse 6, it does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. The idea of that is it doesn't glow. It's not voyeuristic in the sense that you know, you know, it is when you hear somebody's really blown it. A few years ago we had this deal where somebody's picture was in the paper and they were in a situation they shouldn't have been in as a Christian round the front page and it was really bad and it was amazing the temptation to glote. The temptation to cease and seeing somebody in a situation here and about somebody in a situation where they failed miserably.

Well, they've been foolish as I'll get out to glote over it, to spread the news, but it doesn't glow. Now, it doesn't, it's not in denial either because notice it says it rejoices with the truth. Rejoices with the truth. It's not in denial. It doesn't say, you know, there's no problem here. It just doesn't glow over the problem. And then notice what follows in verse 7, it bears all things. The word bears here means to cover like a roof to put something over. It could refer to forgiving or could refer to protection. I think it refers to both because I think those two things are related. Love covers a multitude of sins. Solomon said Peter quoted him. Love covers a multitude of sins. What does that mean?

Does it mean it covers up? It hides. A family member years ago, relative whose son got in real trouble. It wasn't, you know, it was serious enough he was going to, he was going to go before a judge and all that. He simply moved out of the state. He moved back to the Midwest to keep that boy from having to face a judge. That's not what Paul's talking about here. He's talking about the fact that love has a commitment to the object of love in such a way that it seeks to minimize the damage of sin. How do you do that? You turn people away from their sin. If I look at this, if you can see it, in Jude, chapter 23, Jude says that we have to do everything we can to snatch others from the fire and save them.

In other words, to keep them from going down the path of destruction in a life of sin. Two others show mercy mixed with fear, hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh. It seeks to protect them from the damage that sin is going to do. Now once you live the Christian life very long, you can tell the direction of persons going. You know the path they're going down and you know what faces them. You know the consequence. You know the damage it's going to do. Sometimes you have to just stand and watch and allow them to suffer the consequences because that's the only way that God's going to teach them a lesson. But what love seeks to do, it seeks to put a roof over them, to cover them, to help them, aid them and not going down this path.

And then he says, it believes all. It bears all things, it believes all. This is an amazing statement. And it's almost confusing, but what he's talking about here is this. You believe in someone, it doesn't mean that you trust them completely. It doesn't mean you have blind trust, like we can tend to do as parents and be blind to what everybody else in the world sees. And we don't see it. Listen to this, this is a quote from Robertson and Plummer, a very old commentary. These two Britishers wrote years and generations ago, but listen to the wisdom here. In doubtful cases, the person who loves will prefer being too generous in his conclusions. In other words, he will assume the best, even though he's wise enough to know.

He may be wrong. Generous in his conclusions to suspecting another unjustly. In other words, he's more afraid of suspecting something unjustly than he is of giving them the benefit of the doubt. You know, this is a characteristic I've struggled with all my life, is I tend to assume the worst of people. I put two and two together, and I have that kind of mind where I think it's just this incredible ability to figure things out. Here are little snippets here and here, and I'm putting it all together, and I just assume the worst about what's going on here. I confess that sin to you. I've already confessed that the father a hundred times, but he says here that it believes all. He credits him. Robertson goes on.

He credits him with good intentions, which he perhaps does not possess. But won't people run over you? Yep. They will. They'll take advantage of you. But notice what he goes on to say. He says it always hopes. In other words, his proactive future ended when those assumptions don't come true, when you're believing the best, but it turns out you are believing the wrong thing, then you hope for the future. You take care of the present, but you hope for the future. There can be change. They can change. God can change them. And then he says, always perseveres. It continues on to love. Even when you've been disappointed, let down sin against it perseveres. Now, here's one of the greatest statements I've ever found in a commentary on the New Testament.

And it's written by the same man. It's very old, so maybe the English is a little confusing, but listen to this. He is commenting on these three phrases, believes all, hopes all, always perseveres. He says, when the wrong has no evidence, it believes the best. In other words, you're not believing against evidence. There is no evidence yet. And so it believes the best. When the evidence is adverse, when it's against the person, it holds for the best. It looks to the future. They can be changed. And when hopes are repeatedly disappointed, it's still courageously wait. That's what he means by persevere. It continues to love, even though it's been disappointed over and over again. It is that cheerful and loyal fortitude, which having done all without apparent success still stands and endures.

I think that's one of the most profound statements I have ever read in my life about relationships with people who disappoint you and let you down and sin against you repeatedly. That what Paul is saying here, this is Christ's like love. This is exactly how Christ has loved you, isn't it? You've let him down over and over and over again, and he perseveres in his love for you. In fact, you can't get into stop loving you, can you? That's the amazing thing. Some of you have expected him to stop, and you can't get into stop loving you. And he says, this is the kind of love. Paul says, this is the kind of love. Let me summarize this way. There are four dimensions. I think you can summarize from this text.

These facets that we've looked at. First is that the love of Christ and the kind of love we're to have for each other is sacrificial. Greater love has no man in this, but he laid down his life first friends. We have to be willing to sacrifice for one another if we're going to love each other the way Christ loves us. It's costly. It's costly love. It will cost you something. You're going to have to lay down your life. That's the kind of love he's calling us to. And now he says, remember, Jesus says, if you don't do this, you won't have joy. The kind of joy, the kind of profound joy that he's called you to. Secondly, it is righteous. It is disciplining love. It's the kind of love that corrects.

It's the kind of love that doesn't withhold the truth when a person sends. We tell him the truth. We practice integrity with each other. And then it is forgiving. It forgives. It covers. It seeks to see a person set free and avoiding the weight of guilt. And then finally, it is emotional. And I think this is significant. I think it's easy in our culture especially and probably with men more than women to think that we can love without loving with our emotions. David Beckman in his book that the men have gone through and I think one of the Bible studies have gone through has a statement there that I've heard him say for years and years and it's very true that emotions do not validate truth but they do validate your understanding of truth.

In other words, if you understand what it means that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that who's over believes in him should not perish but as eternal life. If you come to really believe that truth that's explained in so many different ways in the word of God, it will touch your emotions. Yesterday, yesterday my son-in-law last evening, my son-in-law was sitting out in a driveway and the kids were playing basketball and this young man was there a teenager who's hanging around because I have a teenage granddaughter. A teenage boy is hanging around when you have a teenage girl but we sit there and we were talking to him and begin to share Christ with him. And as Randy and then my grandson, Ryan, because he asked him because I was telling him, he was asking me from a Catholic background, he's asking me the difference in all these things and so I was telling about what it meant to be saved and what it is that God offers through Christ and that it's not a matter of whether your Catholic or Protestant or Baptist or Presbyterian, it's a matter of do you have a relationship with the living Christ?

Christ is the only one who can say and you have to come to Christ. If you don't come to Christ, you can't be saved. You can come to a Baptist church, you come to a non-denominational church, you can come to to participate in religion and still not be saved. That has been given eternal life and forgiven of your sins and so forth. And so he says to Randy and my grandson, he said, are you saved? Have you been saved? And my son-in-law began to tell him how he got saved. I heard this story several times. And as he's telling him, here's where well I'm up in his eyes. And he's controlling his emotions but you can tell he's getting, it's touching him deeply as it begins to tell him he was just a young teenager.

And they told him he had Hodgkin's disease and he was going to die. And they did surgery and took out one of these gross and they did a biopsy on it and they told him that he had Hodgkin's and they sent it off to another laboratory. And he said, they were telling him, you may not live and yet a friend named Scott Sinner, whose dad was pastor-centered. And now he's pastor-centered in fact. And Scott Sinner, they were just young kids in junior high. He told him up and he said, Randy, don't you realize you could die? And if you die, you're going to have to face God. And you're a sinner and if you don't believe on Christ, you're going to go to hell. And he's telling this young man this. And he said, he told me to read John 316.

Said, I started reading John 316, you know that story about Nicodemus. And he said, all of a sudden for the first time in my life, I've been going to this Christian school, my post-mark Christian, they just put me there because I got in so much trouble in public school to kick me out so they put him in Christian school. And he said, for the first time in my life, was I read that. It began to make sense to me and I realized I was a sinner and I needed a savior. And I believed on Jesus and it changed everything in my life. He's going on like this and the tears are running up in his eyes. And he kind of controls himself and this kid's watching and then he asked my grandson Ryan and he told him he'd begin to tell him about how he got saved.

I had never heard that story and he told him about it on Easter several years ago when this message came through to him and how he believed on Christ and he started getting emotional. And I said to him, do you notice that when people tell you about them coming to Christ they get emotional about it? He goes, yeah, I said that's because this love of God that he opens our eyes to is so deep and so powerful. This man doesn't, this young man doesn't have a father who loves him. He has a father and a step father and neither one of them can stand him. He's never known what it's like to be loved by a father. And I've been telling about what it means to become a Christian is to come into the family of God and be loved by a father, a perfect father who will never stop loving you.

That touches us doesn't it? The kind of love that we are called to have for each other is the kind of love where we engage our hearts. We're not dispassionate. We don't, we don't stay so controlled in our relationships that we refuse to be touched by one another's trials, troubles, needs. That's what he's calling us to to love each other with a love that is sacrificial, righteous, forgiving, and even emotional. It's kind of love we're supposed to have with our spouses. It's the kind of love we're supposed to have with each other in the body of Christ. And Jesus said, when we love each other this way, the world will be convinced that we are as disciples. And notice what first on 316 and 18 says, we know love by this that he laid down his life for us.

That's how we know love. That's the measure of love. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. Little children let us not love with word or with tongue. Let's not just say it, but indeed and in truth. That's what he's calling us to. I'll either stand with me, we'll close in prayer, and then you'll have an opportunity to manifest your love for each other. Our fathers, we come to you this morning, we are so profoundly grateful for the reality of the gospel in our lives. We thank you that the good news that we talk about and we hear proclaimed and we read about in your word is really true and we have experienced it. No one could ever convince me that Jesus has not come and died for my sins and raised from the dead and continues to intercede for me.

I thank you that you bring that kind of conviction to our hearts, Father. I pray this morning for each one of us that we could experience this love in a deeper way than we ever have. Make us great lovers. I pray. I pray, Father, for those among us come who've never experienced the love of God. They've never had the love of God shed about in their hearts. They've never experienced the great depth, the massive power of the love of God in Christ Jesus personally. I pray that they would begin to experience that even today. Draw them to yourself, I pray. Lord, we lay ourselves before you and ask you to empower us to obey the commandment that we've heard today. This great commandment from Jesus our Lord to love each other the way he has loved us.

Help us to be faithful in doing that we pray. In Christ's name, for his glory and reputation we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you.