Andrew Fountain - Fifteen ways to love

download


Full sermon notes - Fifteen ways to love

  • Quick overview of 1 Cor.
    • Can anyone remember what the problems were at the church in Corinth?
    • immorality, lovelessness at Lord’s table, competition in gifts, rivalry re Apollos, chaos at their meetings.
  • In 1 Cor 12 he has been talking about gifts.
    • At the start of 1 Cor 13 he sums up that there are three gifts that are the greatest.
    • What are they?
    • Similarity to the three foundations of Newlife church.
    • Singles out love.
  • Title “15 ways to love”
  • I’m going to end up by saying that we can’t work-up or manufacture love—love is a place
    • explain that at the end

1 Cor 13:4-7

  1. Love is patient, love is kind,
    does not envy, does not boast, it is not puffed up, it is not rude, it is not self-serving, it is not easily angered and keeps no record of wrongs.
  2. It is not glad about wrongs, but rejoices in the truth.
  3. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

v.4 Love is patient, love is kind

  • patient: simply means giving time to people
  • “Suffers long” (KJV)
  • Matt 18, the servant who owed money “be patient with me and I will pay”
  • Some of us need you to be very patient and not get easily frustrated with us
  • Sometimes I am slow at learning, like where things go in the kitchen
    • Anne has to be patient with me and allow for the fact I’m learning slowly
    • The other day someone said to me “I’ve already told you that!—weren’t you listening?”
  • Jesus demonstrated this with the disciples, time and time again.
  • The other side of the coin is: kindness

Love is kind

  • Both together in Romans 2:4 talking about God’s attitude to his enemies:
  • 4. Or do you have contempt for the wealth of his kindness, tolerance, and patience,
    and yet do not know that God’s kindness leads you to repentance?
  • Passive & Active—Opposite sides of the coin
    • Patience means not giving people what they deserve
    • Kindness means giving them what they don’t deserve
  • Jesus with the disciples: found them having an argument about who would be greater in the kingdom! —what patience he had to have
  • Mother Wanted her sons to sit each side of his throne.
    • Have these people not been listening?
    • He says “Have I not been so long with you Philip...?”
  • Jesus had to have so much patience
  • Mat 11:30. For my yoke is easy kind, and my burden is light.”
    • “An unkind yoke?” A kind farmer would give a kind yoke.
  • This was like the heading. Positive and Negative.
  • next we have Seven “nots”

Seven “nots”

  1. does not envy
  2. does not boast
  3. it is not puffed up
  4. it is not rude
  5. it is not self-serving
  6. it is not easily angered
  7. keeps no record of wrongs.

1. Not Envyious

  • Definition? Someone else has something that you want
  • Acts 7:9 tells us that Joseph’s brothers sold him as a slave out of envy
  • We can be envious of spiritual gifts (supposed to promote unity)
  • Some people here have more than others —are you glad for them? good news—someone has a new job
  • Rivalry in the church of Corinth between different factions (3:3)

2. Not Boastful

  • Definition? Means to go on about your accomplishments, to make sure other people know what an amazing person you are
  • We all do it—some people are unsubtle—they tell you all the time how amazing they are
  • Most of us are much more careful—we tell stories that put us in a good light
  • That doesn’t mean we don’t tell anyone when we’ve done well.
  • A friend of ours in Engand recently called to say she’d passed an exam with 99% —was she boasting? no, she was just excited and wanted to share her joy.
    • wrong to have a “false humility” that would never say anything positive about ourselves

3. Not Proud

  • Definition?
  • Literally “puffed up”, —how does that work? arrogant and inflated above our size

Puffed Up

Puffed Up

Image source: yearbook.brockrac

  • E.g. Matt Redman—how hard it is to look for a reaction as a “seal of approval” from God. Not to get inflated when God does great things.
  • Paul said that so that he didn’t get “puffed up”, God gave him a “thorn in the flesh”.
    • What would a thorn do to the guy in the picture?

4. Not rude

  • literally embarrasing or shaming others
  • By not sharing the food they had brought, they embrarrased those who had brought nothing
  • If someone was supposed to do something at the meeting today and forgot to do it, and I publically mentioned it.
  • Problem at Corinth with people who had no food being humiliated.
  • My Mum’s “most embarrassing moment”
    • Shamed my mom “That man’s smoking a cigarette”
    • We “punish” people, by embarrassing them for what they have not done, in front of others

Ashamed

Ashamed

Image source: kotiki

5. not self-seeking

  • The ultimate good is to find yourself?
  • to be the best person you can be?

6. Not Easily Angered

  • You know there are some people for whom it doesn’t take much to get them cross do you know anyone like this?
  • You have to be careful talking to them, put things in the right way
  • Can you be corrected easily?

Yes, I’m Angry!

Yes, I'm Angry!

Image source: Carmen Haberichter

  • We need to be the kind of person that people can point things out to.
  • David is hiding in the forest from the rebellion of Absalom
    • Joab says “you carry on behaving like this and you’ll have nobody loyal to you any more”
  • Anger is an energy. It is not wrong to be angry (God is)
    • Some thing should make us angry
    • It’s about acknowledging it but not expressing it in a destructive way

7. Keeps no record of wrongs

  • Do you still hold onto wrongs people have done to you years ago?
  • Publically embarrassed by Pastor years ago

v.6,7

  1. It is not glad about wrongs, but rejoices in the truth.
  2. It bears all things,
            believes all things,
            hopes all things,
    endures all things.
  • God is love—we can only do this in him
  • v.6 It is not glad about wrongs, but rejoices in the truth.
    • Why should we be glad about wrongs?
    • If someone treats you badly, then something bad happens to them
  • v.7 First and last are a pair
    • For the sake of love, putting up with bad treatment
    • Putting the best construction on things
      • example of persone who was under a lot of pressure —“You’re making excuses for him”
      • There are some very good reasons he has not done this for you.
      • Person was getting very angry because they thought I was making excuses for them
      • Jump immmediately to the worst explanation: He’s deliberately trying to snub me
    • Whenever you have a range of possible explantations...
    • It’s about not judging their hearts
      • If Luke dropped something on my foot
      • If someone said something hurtful—two explanations. “I’m sure you weren’t intending to hurt me...”

1 Cor 13:4-7

  1. Love is patient, love is kind,
    does not envy, does not boast, it is not puffed up, it is not rude, it is not self-serving, it is not easily angered and keeps no record of wrongs.
  2. It is not glad about wrongs, but rejoices in the truth.
  3. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love is a place

  • God is love, we need to be in him (elasticated bracelet)
  • Three things on it
    • held together by love
    • The place of love is in the middle
  • “He who is born of God loves”.
    • You can only ulimately love if the life of God is in you.
    • But Jesus said “I in you and you in me”
    • God is the ultimate example of love
  • In the middle of this loving embrace we experience and receive love and give it out.
  • How do I get there?
    • If you are not a Christian, then you getting there is a free gift.
    • The only cost is to give up what is not love in your life and admit that you need God in order to love
    • When you tell him of your need and ask him, he will give you his love
  • These 15 things—I can’t do them. God’s divine love in me has to do them
  • Question:
    • If we can’t do these ourselves, but the life of God in us will do them naturally, then why bother to list them?
    • How do I know if I am living in dependence on God?
    • If I can recognize what love looks like, it will help me to know if I am living in dependence on God.
    • The list helps us to know where we need strength because we are not doing it.
    • Road signs tell you when you are on the right road. They don’t actually get you there.

Updated on 2015-02-09 by Andrew Fountain