Love Is More Than a Feeling Rich Nathan April 7-8, 2018 Love Is More Than a Feeling 1 Corinthians 13

Love is More than a Feeling Rich Nathan April 7-8, 2018 Love is More than a Feeling 1 Corinthians 13

I read a survey of children, ages 4-8, who were asked the question: what is love? Let me read to you some of their answers.

Slide “Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.” – Karl, age 5

Slide “Love is when you go out to eat and you give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs.” – Chrissy, age 6

Slide “When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis, too. That’s love.” – Rebecca, age 8

Slide “During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my Daddy waving and smiling. He was the only one doing that. I wasn’t scared anymore.” – Cindy, age 8

Slide “Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him along all day.” – Mary Ann, age 4

Slide “I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones.” – Lauren, age 4

Slide “When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.” – Karen, age 7

Adults have tried to define love. One cynical adult said this:

Slide

“Love is temporary insanity cured by marriage.”

There’s lots of confusion around the meaning of love. We live in a time in history where love is almost always reduced to being “in love”. Today, I’m starting a new series that’s titled, “Love is More than a Feeling”. Those of us who are followers of Jesus know that he gave his followers two great commandments – to love God with all of our being and to love our neighbor as ourselves. But how do you love people that you don’t necessarily like – annoying people, irritating co-workers, difficult family members, people who have hurt you, people who have hurt people you love? Yes, we Christians are supposed to love – but what does love look like outside of church in the real world of stressful jobs and traffic jams and kids making terrible choices? What is love? How can we become more loving people? That’s what the series is all about. I’ve titled the first message, “Love is More than a Feeling”. Let’s pray.

I want to read to you a famous chapter in the Bible written by the Apostle Paul which some people have called the Love Chapter.

Slide 1 Corinthians 13 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Now, I know that many couples have had 1 Corinthians 13 read or even preached on their wedding day. 1 Corinthians 13 was even read by a judge when Marlene and I got married. We got married in a civil ceremony. It was not a religious ceremony because our two families could not agree on which religious official would marry us – a pastor or a rabbi. In fact, the only thing our two families agreed on was neither wanted our pastor to do the wedding. Both sides of the family refused to go if the other side won.

So, we said, “Look, we just want to be married.” We got a judge and he read 1 Corinthians 13.

But 1 Corinthians 13 was not written primarily for wedding days or for people “in love”. And it wasn’t written for the non-Christian world as a nice love poem. The Apostle Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 13 for Christians in the church – followers of Jesus – who found it difficult to love – not just on their wedding day, but every day.

The so-called Love Chapter was not written for lovers, but for the loveless Corinthians and loveless Catholics and Presbyterians and Baptists and Pentecostals and Vineyardites who have conflicts, who are quick to assert their rights, who are offended by each other. 1 Corinthians 13 was written for Christians who bring law suits against each other and who commit sexual sin and who are ambitious and who look down on folks who are poor. Indeed, one well-known commentary on 1 Corinthians says that the entire book is a continual reflection on the meaning of Christian love with chapter 13 being a highpoint. Again, 1 Corinthians 13 is not written for just lovers or just for wedding days. It’s written for followers of Jesus who find it hard to love!

Some people read this chapter and say that “It’s so inspiring! It’s so poetic! So encouraging! I just love reading 1 Corinthians 13!” I don’t know about you, but when I read 1 Corinthians 13, I find it incredibly humbling.

Slide Love’s humbling

Slide 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

The Apostle Paul doesn’t say “If you speak in the tongues of men or angels”. He doesn’t say “if someone speaks in the tongues of men or angels”. Rather, in the first three verses, Paul uses the first person singular “I” eight times. The Apostle is not standing above us or scolding us. Rather, Paul says, “If I don’t do those things, I am nothing.”

The Apostle is inviting you and me to personally apply the text to ourselves. He’s inviting you and me to put our names into 1 Corinthians 13. And when you do that, it’s really humbling. Rich is patient. Rich is kind. Rich does not envy. Rich does not boast. Rich is not proud. Rich is not rude. Rich is not self-seeking. Rich is not easily angered. And a little later, Rich never fails. It doesn’t work so well. Put your name in the text and see if it works better for you. Jennifer is patient and kind. Deion does not envy or

boast. Christopher is not arrogant or rude. Monique does not insist on her own way. Jose is not irritable. Jessica is not resentful. It doesn’t work!

1 Corinthians 13 shouldn’t inspire us, it should humble us. Because the only name we can possibly put in the text and have it work is Jesus’ name. We have to realize that if we’re going to live out 1 Corinthians 13-style love, what we all desperately need more of is more of Jesus. The resurrected Jesus must enter our personalities by his Holy Spirit and enable us to love in ways we otherwise could not love apart from his resurrection power.

This chapter not only speaks about love’s humbling, but

Slide Love’s arithmetic

Let’s read this again:

Paul make a series of comparisons in this passage and he tells us that love is superior to any gift we may have – whether it’s tongues or prophecy or knowledge or faith. Any gift that people admire, he says, whether the gift is a spiritual gift or a natural gift – it could be academic brilliance, it could be athletic prowess, it could be artistic or musical genius, speaking or writing, house repair, cooking – take any gift, any talent you can think of, and the Apostle Paul says:

Slide Love > any gift

He says that love is not only greater than any gift, here’s what he writes in verse 3:

Slide 1 Corinthians 13:3 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Again, he’s telling us about the arithmetic of love. Paul writes that:

Slide

Love > any accomplishment

Think of any accomplishment, any great good you could achieve – winning a Grammy, winning an Oscar, winning a Nobel Prize, being on the New York Times Bestseller list, being elected President, making a billion dollars, being elected to the Hall of Fame – Paul says:

Slide Love > any accomplishment

Love’s arithmetic goes beyond simply comparing love to any good thing, whether gift or talent or accomplishment. Notice that the Apostle Paul uses the word “nothing” two times.

Slide 1 Corinthians 13:2 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.

Slide 1 Corinthians 13:3 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Here’s love’s arithmetic according to the Bible:

Slide Any gift – love = 0

You can be unbelievably talented. You can be incredibly smart and have an extraordinary IQ. But if your gifts and your talents are not exercised in love for the benefit of others, they are nothing.

Consider, Paul says, self-sacrifice. The same formula works for self-sacrifice.

Slide Self-sacrifice – love = 0

Is that not true, by the way, in your experience? Have you ever known someone who wears themselves out to the bone, serving and serving and has what some people would call a “martyr complex”? “Oh, don’t worry about me. I’m desperately sick. I didn’t get any sleep last night, but I’ll drag myself out of bed and make all of you breakfast this morning. I certainly don’t expect any of you to help me or to wash the dishes. I’ll just lean on my walker and hopefully not fall over. How will I do the dishes?

But don’t worry about me.” All that service. All that work. All that activity minus love is all for naught. It’s all nothing.

Notice that Paul doesn’t simply say that any gift minus love is nothing or any service minus love is nothing. In verse 2, the Apostle says, “I am nothing.”

Slide 1 Corinthians 13:2 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.

So, in considering the arithmetic of love, we might write the formula:

Slide Any person – love = 0

You can be a great doctor or lawyer or executive or teacher or pastor or business owner. You could be incredibly successful in what you do, but if you are dreadful at loving, people who are near to you – your spouse, your kids, your co-workers, your extended family, your friends and clients and so on – however great you are, scripture says to us:

Slide Any person – love = 0

Think about the last funeral that you went to. I’ve never performed a funeral for anyone where someone got up and read the deceased person’s resume. “James got his Master’s in Mechanical Engineering, he went on to move up the corporate ladder. His company, by the way, is the nation’s second largest producer of air compressors.” Nobody cares about that at a funeral. People share stories about how you loved them. If no one has stories like that, no one can step up and say, “Here’s how I was loved.”

Then the formula of scripture would be:

Slide Any life – love = 0

To finish off this point, scripture would add that

Slide Any church - love = 0

Consider what Jesus himself said to a church in the city of Ephesus in the first century:

Slide Revelation 2:2-5

2 I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. 3 You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.

4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. 5 Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.

Here’s an incredibly hard working church. They are impacting their community. They are doctrinally correct in their teaching. They care about moral standards and they hold their leaders to standards of holiness. They aren’t afraid to discipline leaders, even if it means that some members will leave. They just have this one little problem. The church lacks love. And the lovelessness of the Ephesian church is such a serious issue for Jesus that he says, “Despite all the good that you’re doing, if you don’t learn to love better, if you don’t learn to love your brothers and sisters in the church and love the people in your community, your church will cease to exist. You will no longer be a light in my presence and your light will go out among the congregations of my people.”

Slide Any church, any person, any gift, any life – love = 0

We’ve considered love’s humbling and love’s arithmetic. 1 Corinthians 13 goes on and speaks to us about:

Slide Love’s actions

Slide 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Now, we don’t pick this up very often in any English translations, but in the original (which was written in Greek) the words used to describe love in this chapter are not nouns or adjectives. Rather, they’re verbs. Paul uses at least 15 verbs. In other words, when the Bible tells us what love is or isn’t, it doesn’t give us a philosophical or abstract definition of love. It describes what love does. Love is as love does.

The punchline of the Good Samaritan is that the way you know that you are a loving neighbor to someone else is because of what you do. It’s not what you feel towards them. It’s not what you think. Love is what love does.

So, Paul doesn’t say in 1 Corinthians 13 (as we might) that love is a feeling or love feels this way. We put every type of love under one word. We say we love chocolate. We love Ohio State football. I experienced love at first sight. God showed his great love for us by sending his Son to die for us. We have one word for all of those different experiences. The Greeks had different words. The Ancient Greeks had a different word for romantic love that involved our feelings, feelings of having butterflies in our stomach, the feeling of your heart skipping a beat as you are with your lover, the warm flush that comes over your body. Greeks called being in love “eros”.

Slide Eros

The first time I held my wife, Marlene, on the dance floor I literally heard bells. I thought my head would explode. Was that 1 Corinthians 13 love? No, that was eros. That was desire. That’s what we would call “being in love”. But Paul says that love is an action. Love is as love does. So, the word that the Apostle Paul uses for love is not eros but

Slide

Agape

Agape is a selfless, sacrificial love that is best seen in Jesus laying down his life for us.

The verbs used for this agape selfless love in 1 Corinthians 13 are all in the present tense which in the original Greek means continuous action. Paul says that love always works this way. Love is always faithful. Love is always kind. Love is never rude. Love is never irritable. Paul explicitly says this in verse 7.

Slide 1 Corinthians 13:7

7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Here’s a few lessons before we move on. You and I may not feel loving toward a particular person. We may feel hurt; we may feel defensive or angry; or we may feel nothing. We may feel just cold toward the person or hard or uncaring or tired of trying. None of that matters! The Apostle Paul is telling us that we can still love! Love is an action and it’s an ongoing action.

However I feel, I can still choose to respond kindly to an angry email. However you feel, you can still choose to act patiently or to forgive. And just because we acted kindly once or we forgave once and didn’t get a warm or positive response doesn’t let us off the hook. The Lord is not asking you or me to try to change our feelings. What he is commanding us to do is to act in love, and to keep on acting in love. Loving action is what Jesus followers look like. Loving action is what distinguishes Christians in the world from everyone else. Loving action is our Christian mark. Acting in love is what makes us as Christians the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

Well, I’ve spoken about  love’s humbling  love’s arithmetic  love’s actions

I’m going to close today by speaking about

Slide Love’s opposites

The Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 first defines love by what it is and next he goes on and speaks about what it isn’t. That’s a great way to define something. Let me give you the antonym. Here’s the opposite of this thing. We could do a whole series simply out of 1 Corinthians 13. But I just want to look at one item on the list as we finish up today.

Slide 1 Corinthians 13:5

5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

The New American Standard Bible says love is not provoked. I like the English Standard Version. It says:

Slide Love is not irritable.

One Bible commentator says that the word can refer to either a simple irritation or outright anger or anything in between. In the end, he offers the word “exasperated”.

We could add other synonyms. Love is not grumpy or grouchy. Love doesn’t get ticked off or fed up. Love doesn’t go off on people. Love doesn’t launch into tirades or verbal abuse. It doesn’t give people the silent treatment or walk around the house in a crummy mood. If I am grumpy or grouchy or ticked off or I go off on someone or I’m just plain irritable, I need to remember love’s arithmetic.

Slide Any person – love = 0

Right now, with this attitude, I’m a big zero. I can accomplish nothing of God’s kingdom, nothing eternal, nothing that matters in the sight of God. The same thing is true when we’re rude or self-seeking, envious or boastful. All those things are signs of being

loveless. You can’t love and be rude. You can’t love and envy at the same time. You can’t love and still keep a record of what somebody did that’s wrong. So, Paul says that love is not irritable.

Have you ever been around someone who just irritates you? It’s not just what they do, but the way they do it. How the person eats, what they talk about, the way they laugh or sneeze or drive. They’re too talkative. They won’t shut up or they’re too silent. They just stare at me.

There are times that we get irritable – when we’re tired, when we’re hungry, when our resources are depleted, when we feel put upon by another request, another demand, and we feel disrespected, we feel unappreciated, we feel misunderstood. In C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves he says the “daily frictions and frustrations” that we meet in our everyday relationships proves to us that our own natural love is not enough, that we need something more. Usually when we’re irritated and we’re angry, we think that what needs to change is this other person or this circumstance. Lewis says that we think to ourselves, "If only I had been more fortunate with my children.” It turns out that every child is sometimes infuriating. “If only my husband was more considerate, less lazy.” Her husband responds, “If only my wife was less moody and made more sense.” It is impossible for our natural love to not get depleted by the bumps and bruises we experience in this world. When we find ourselves irritated, offended, behaving rudely or any of the negative things that Paul names as love’s opposite, that’s a flashing warning light. It’s not a warning light that this other person needs to change. I need to change.

As I look at myself and you look at yourself, we need to admit to ourselves that our love is not enough. There’s simply not enough love in me. If I’m in a family in which everyone is fighting and we’re all irritated and annoyed with each other, Father, there’s simply not enough love in my family. If this is true in my workplace, then Father, there’s simply not enough love in our workplace. If it’s true in our small group or our church, then Father, there’s simply not enough love in the Vineyard.

Which leads us back to Jesus. The humble prayer of the heart that knows it falls short regarding love is this: Lord, I can’t do this. I can’t love this person the way you want me to. I find them too annoying, too obnoxious, too aggressive, too passive, too unpleasant, too irritating, too weird or whatever. Lord Jesus, I need you to enter my personality by your resurrected power. You, Lord Jesus, are perfect love. Empower me to act in love towards the person that I’m struggling to like. Let’s pray.

Love is More than a Feeling Rich Nathan April 7-8, 2018 Love is More than a Feeling 1 Corinthians 13

I. Love’s humbling

II. Love’s arithmetic

III. Love’s actions

IV. Love’s opposites