Above All, Love

1 Peter 4, 7-9 to one another without grumbling. You may be seated. It's an exciting text we get to today and, Lord willing, next week if we stay on the plan of going verse by verse through 1 Peter, which I think most people appreciate. And that's because we're getting to an area that is very important to our understanding of how the church functions.

And you'll notice when we're here and when we do communion, We talk about church membership on a regular basis. In fact, weekly it's mentioned. And it's because church membership is vital to the Christian life. It's vital to the New Testament. And we're going to be celebrating very soon, adding some members to the church, Lord willing. And this section of Scripture doesn't come out and say explicitly, Hey, this is how church membership works.

But when we inspect the text that we're about to look at, what we're going to see is that Peter is really admonishing the church as to how they are to act around one another. And in particular, when we get to next week, when we talk about the gifts of the Holy Spirit that he gives to his church and to his people to be exercised in the church, we'll see how that functions. But this week, what we're really going to talk about is love.

That's really the theme of what Peter is getting at here. And so when you look at verse 7, Peter says, The end of all things is at hand. Therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. And we discussed that last week. We discussed how we're supposed to live because Jesus is returning and because he's returning imminently, meaning at any moment this may occur.

In fact, we should be looking forward to it. We talked about what that means, and we left off the end of the verse, it was mostly a function of time, that it's for the sake of your prayers. And you'll remember in 1 Peter 3, 7, that Peter admonishes husbands how they are to be living in this time, and he tells them how they're to live. And at the end he says, so that your prayers may not be hindered.

And so there's an understanding in Scripture that our prayers are hindered by our behavior, and our prayers are actually heard by God as the result of Jesus Christ entering into the throne room on our behalf. But as believers, you can mar your relationship with God through your sin. and so if you want to be able to live out of 1 John 5 whatever we ask of him we know that we have from him because he knows we keep his commandments then you need to live a life of keeping his commandments and so this is not about keeping God's law in order that you can be saved but it's the relationship that God has told us to have and so if you want to have your prayers answered so you're in the middle of persecution. Some of you have been praying for Pastor James Coates, and I hope that continues.

And there's a whole church in Alberta that's praying for him right now. And I bet they want their prayers to be answered by God. But the Proverbs tell us if a man turns his ear from the hearing of the law, even his prayer is an abomination to God. And so what we want to do is we We want to be prayerful people, but not just prayerful. We want to actually live lives that show that we really are God's children.

It's not a genie in a bottle kind of thing where, well, if I do enough good things, then God will answer my prayers. But it's about you wanting to live a life that shows you're really one of God's children. My kids come to me. I'm a loving father. when they ask me for something very often whether they get it or not is going to be based on their behavior that day.

Right? A lot of you parents understand that. We try to reward good behavior. And so our Father in Heaven is much better than we are. He looks at those things even more seriously. So I want you to think about your self-control and your sober-mindedness for the sake of your prayers.

But this week we get to verse 8 and it starts with above all. and it's not exactly above all and I've got all my Greek students in the room now who are going to start checking up on me when I say these kinds of things but if you look at the original and you compare it to other places where the Bible says above all it doesn't translate above all necessarily if you don't want to, it can also be before all I don't know if it's entirely a different thing either but the translators of the ESV wanted to say above all And what's interesting is the question I have is, what is all? Like, above all, where did we all of a sudden get this from? And I think if you go back, we've done this a few times, and I want you to be able to do this on your own when you're reading.

Go back to 1 Peter 1. And I'm going to tell you what I think all is. In 1 Peter 1, we said the thesis of the rest of the letter, we said this probably in September or something, was that as he who called you is holy, in verse 15, you also be holy in all your conduct And then I told you that the rest of the letter and some of you weren here when we started 1 Peter the rest of the letter is Peter fleshing out and explaining what it means to be holy in all your conduct.

So when you get to 1 Peter 2 and there's more commands these commands are really just like bullet points underneath the big heading that says be holy as I am holy. And so he told us to be holy, he told us to follow the word. In chapter 2 verse 11 he tells us to abstain from the passions of the flesh and then he gives us these bullet points in 2.13 be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution the submission to authorities in verse 18 servants be subject to your masters with all respect chapter 3 verse 1 wives be submissive so how wives should act chapter 3 verse 7 husbands how they're supposed to act.

And it's been basically a non-stop explanation of details of, here's how to apply this idea of being holy. If I just told you to be holy, and you walked out of the room, you wouldn't know what to do. So Peter's trying to be helpful by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And when we get to chapter 4, he gave us all these admonitions up to this point. And he gets to verse 8 and he says, above all, I think Peter is trying to let people know, hey, there's kind of a greater thing, or I'll say a more excellent thing that you should be focused on, which not only is, in a sense, more important than all of these other commands, but it's actually the source of really the strength and the power to even begin to fulfill these other commands.

And so we're going to see what that looks like. Because he says, above all, keep loving one another earnestly. And he said, since love covers a multitude of sins. And some of you are going to recognize that that phrase since love covers a multitude of sins is an Old Testament quote. And those of you who read a proverb a day probably could start to guess when in the month you hit that one, right?

Chapter 10. So if you do the proverb a day thing you read it a tenth of every month maybe. And so we'll look at how Peter's using that quote. but what I want you to consider now is just love. Love is the most misunderstood concept today in our world. It's one of the most abused concepts and because God is love, we're also blaspheming and profaning God's name every time we misuse the concept of love.

Every time it's defined improperly, we are iniquitizing what God is in a sense. And every time we misapply love as well. And so we want to understand what it means to be loving. And the way we do that is by looking at the Bible. So turn to Ephesians 5, verse 1. And we're going to jump around the New Testament a little bit.

And we're going to look at just some explanations of love. All culminating in... So this is my goal, is we're going to go pretty fast through a whole bunch of verses. So you can jot them down. I can share them with you later if you want to go review them. You can always listen to this on sermon audio later too.

And then hopefully we're going to get to the point where we just spend the bulk of our time in 1 Corinthians 13, which I think most people know is that we actually call it the love chapter. And so Ephesians 5, as a result of everything that has happened, your election from the foundation of the world, the fact that Christ came and broke down the dividing wall of hostility between Jews and Gentiles, and then he's told you to follow this, have this new life in Christ, putting on righteousness and holiness and the image of God. You get the Ephesians 5.1 and he says, therefore, because of all the stuff that Ephesians 1 through 4 told you, be imitators of God as beloved children.

So because you've been adopted by God, you should imitate them. Children should grow to be like their parents. You look around the room and I can tell you how some of the kids are probably going to end up when they're a little older because I know how the parents are. and some of them it's going to be bad your kids are going to have bad habits it's actually how you learn some of your own sin in your life is when you start getting mad at your kid and you figure out well they're just doing what I do and then we start excusing it like well it's probably an okay thing I think we've all done that too but children grow to be like their parents even adopted children grow to even look like their parents So people who you're around a lot, you imitate them.

And Paul's telling us, be imitators of God as beloved children. If you're really God's child today, maybe some of you don't even know what that means. Some of us think everyone's God's child. That's what the world would tell us. Everyone's God's children. Everyone's God's child, they'd say.

We're all God's children. if you're God's child that means that you were conceived in sin that you had the original stain of Adam on you the guilt of Adam was imputed to you even before in a sense you were ever a thought and that you spent as many days as you could in rebellion against God and every time that God had his word preached to you some of you guys were in church a long time even and every time God's word was preached to you you rejected it and you opened the Bible yourself and you looked at it and you made excuses for why you didn't have to obey it or believe what it said. And then because of God's amazing grace, he sent his Holy Spirit to effectually call you to believe the gospel that Jesus Christ died in your place and he suffered the punishment that you deserved on the cross. And if that's all he ever did was suffer your punishment and keep you out of hell, that would be more grace and mercy than any of us could ever imaginably deserve at all.

More than we could possibly fathom how great he is. But instead, he also offers his righteousness to people so they can be seen as righteous. And if all God did was look at you and say hey you used to be a sinner I now changed your heart I granted you faith in Christ so now you can be treated as a believer and now I call you a believer And I'll even let you come into heaven, that would be phenomenal, and then you could be like angels and whatever other created beings God decides to have in His heaven for all eternity.

And that would be phenomenal grace, that would be infinite grace already, and it would be more than any of us could imagine or deserve. but instead God says I'm going to adopt you to be my son also and my daughter and so instead of being like an angel and being made perfect and glorified one day so you can never sin and at least just spend eternity like without sin and without the consequences of the curse and all the things that all sorts of created beings that God can make will have God actually makes us his children and if you believe that he's done that to you and your life doesn't reflect imitation of who he is we question why if you knew a little boy or girl who was in a horrible situation a foster home kind of thing, an orphanage thing and you found a family that adopted them and they spent their life doing the exact opposite of what these adoptive parents prescribed for them you wouldn't think they were grateful you wouldn't think they really believed they were part of a new family so as beloved children imitate God and walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God so first of all when you're thinking about loving one another earnestly if your first thought is that you're going to wake up and you're going to love more then your first thought's wrong. It often is. Your first thought is how does Christ love?

And how did Christ exhibit His love? He demonstrated His love for us in that while we were still sinners He died for us, right? At the right time He died for the weak and the ungodly. That's what Jesus Christ did. And so you look to Jesus Christ as your example. The world is full of self-help books on how to love your spouse more.

The world is full of self-help books on how to love your parents, how to love your kids better. Some of them probably aren't terrible little techniques, like five love languages and some of these kinds of things where it breaks some of it down practically for people. But in the end, you have no power to love anyone but yourself unless the Holy Spirit grants you faith in Jesus Christ.

And your love for anyone needs to start with your love for Jesus Christ, which starts with his love for you. You love because he first loved you. So focus on Jesus Christ and the things he did for people, the self-sacrifice. Read through the Gospels and look at what he did for his people, what he endured so that filthy sinners could be adopted and receive his inheritance that he earned.

How many of you would share your inheritance in this earthly life with your rotten brother or sister. That's what the prodigal son story is about, right? Everybody thinks it's about the son that left. The story is about the brother who was still there who thought it was his inheritance to still have and now dad has given a little bit of it to the other brother.

The story is about the Pharisees who hate God's grace and God's power to do what He wants with His things. That's really one of the points of it. I won't say that's all it's about. So don't be like that. Look at Jesus who shares all His things. Turn to Colossians 3.

If you've been adopted by God, you're expected to imitate Him and walk in love. So Colossians 3, after a bunch of commands. I mean, the New Testament's full of commands. I love these guys that think they're like New Testament Christians, so they don't have to follow the law. And it's like, it's easier to remember 10 of them than the 300 or so commands in the New Testament.

Or more than that, probably. It's crazy. But Paul says, put on then as God's chosen ones in verse 12, 312. Holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kind as humility, meekness, and patience. Kind of sounds like 1 Peter 3.8. And he says, bearing with one another. and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you.

One of the ways you love people is by doing for them what God's done for you, which is forgiveness. And he says, so you also must forgive. And above all, there's that phrase above all again, right? And I'll tell you, it's actually different words in Greek. So a few of you guys are excited to find that probably now, all my Greek students in here. but he says above all put on love which binds everything together in perfect harmony okay so what i what i what i really am going to try to communicate to you if you leave with one thought okay i don't i don't do a puritanical outline of sermons i don't have 10 points probably don't always give you one point to really focus on because there's really just so much in the scripture but if you leave with one point it's that love binds everything together in perfect harmony.

That without love all of your virtues, all of the good things you may think about doing end up being completely worthless. They're nothing. And with love, even all of your imperfect attempts to do all the other things that you're supposed to be doing, they're of great value. And they can help people. And I think most of you know that. Most of you know if somebody comes to you and has a complaint against you or a criticism, or even a rebuke or a reproof, if you think they really love you, no matter how imperfectly they can explain it and no matter how wrong they actually may be you actually kind of appreciate it And somebody can come to you with as much truth as humanly possible and if you don't think they love you, you'll ignore it.

That doesn't mean don't give people truth. It doesn't mean you shouldn't listen to people if you don't think they're loving about it. but you know the feeling is what I'm saying you understand what it's like when somebody you think really cares about you, you're willing to even suffer some injury 1 John 4, 7 so along the same theme of love we start with Jesus Christ we read that love is really the source of all the goodness you can see in this world. In 1 John 4-7, John says, Beloved, let us love one another.

What is John sometimes called? What did he call himself? Do you remember? The apostle that Jesus loved. I think I heard a couple different versions of it. We have too many English versions of the Bible sometimes.

He was the apostle that Jesus loved. And also a lot of people just call him the apostle of love. I've heard that as well. It makes me think of that Steve Miller song. I've got to get that out of my head now. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God.

And whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. So he's making a logical progression here. If you don't exhibit love in your life, it's because you don't know God so you see some of these angry Christians walking around or online or whatever and one of the charges leveled against them is they just seem so unloving, I don't even believe they know God you know in Matthew 18 at the end of the chapter that's the part where the guy gets all the forgiveness of his huge debt and then he won't forgive another guy a debt that's insignificant compared to what he's been forgiven that's Jesus' indictment against people that can't see that they've been given so much by God that they need to give it to others in this the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him in this is love not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins the wrath satisfying sacrifice and then 11, beloved if God so loved us so if you've received this love of God we also ought to love one another it's amazingly profound and yet very simple, right? if God so loved you, love one another it's really uncomplicated anybody with children knows how much you wish your kids would just be kind to one another sometimes think of how much God looks at his children and sees us with our little spats a husband and wife who he's joined together in holy matrimony he's given them a special love for one another that they acknowledge actually exists they've lived all sorts of life together and putting a toothpaste at the wrong side of the sink once in a while can cause an amazing argument with people.

And we look at our little children and we think, why are you fighting over a ball, you know? Maybe what we should do is we should look at ourselves more too. We should understand that God so loved us, we ought to love one another. In verse 13 of chapter 4, John says, By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us. It says, Because He has given us of His Spirit.

So it's in the same context here of God abiding in us. If we love one another, God abides in us. Verse 12, He's given us of His Spirit. Well, what's the fruit of the Spirit? When we say the fruit of the Spirit, what's the first thing we say? Love. you have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control these are all the virtues that Peter's been telling us to do anyway self-control, right? the whole Bible is all these virtues that you're told that you ought to have because you're an adopted child of God and it starts with love if you love people, you're going to do these things 1 Timothy 1.5 Paul tells Timothy the aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart, good conscience, sincere faith.

Proverbs 17. Now go back to Proverbs 17.9 and then we'll go to Proverbs 10. Proverbs 17.9. Whoever covers an offense seeks love, but he who repeats of matter separates close friends. He says a rebuke goes deeper into a man of understanding than a hundred blows into a fool. So if you cover an offense, you're seeking love, it says here.

Turn to Proverbs 10, now verse 12. This is the, or verse 11 and 12 actually. But this is what Peter's quoting. And when the New Testament authors quote the Old Testament, what I want you to think to yourself is that they're not just randomly pulling a verse out of the blue like a fortune cookie. Let me just get that out of your mind for a moment. Proverbs aren't an associated array of fortune cookie sayings that just got put in a list.

Proverbs have context, and it takes a little work to dig into them, not just pull one verse out to say what you think it means. But in Proverbs 10, verse 11, we read, The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence. and then he says hatred stirs up strife but love covers all offenses this is what Peter quoted above all keep loving one another earnestly because love covers a multitude of sins and so there's a couple ways we can look at that one of them is if you love somebody you're going to ignore their sin that doesn't cooperate with the rest of the Bible very well though. But I do think that there is a level of truth to the fact that if you love somebody, you're going to overlook what I'll call some minor offenses in their life.

You're going to overlook things that people would consider nitpicky. You're going to be able to tell the difference between somebody who had a random moment where they did something that wasn't right, maybe after they were sick and had a hard day at work or with the children, you're going to understand that sometimes people fail and we're not going to make a big deal out of everything. And instead, you'll be able to focus on somebody's pattern of sin if you want to help them with their sin.

The second thing I want you to think about is that hatred stirs up strife and love covers offenses. And when we are offended by somebody, particularly in the church, in your home, in your family, our tendency and our temptation, I think, is to do what I'm going to literally just call gossip, is that you need to go tell other people what they did. And it's all hidden under the guise of, well, it's true.

He really did do this. She really did say that. So I don't think that when it says love covers up offenses, and when Peter tells us that love covers a multitude of sins, I don't think what Peter is saying is ignore the sin in somebody else's life. I think what Peter wants to remind us of is that we don't need to go tell everybody else about it. That if you have a brother or a sister in Jesus Christ, who has committed a sin against you or maybe some sin that you know about that you think that they need to have dealt with, Jesus has given us a prescription for how to deal with them and it's to go to them and talk to your brother about it.

It's to trust the power of the Holy Spirit from His Word to do what God said to do, which means that you believe what He says and to go and deal with it directly with them. And you don't have to go tell everybody else. You don't have to call the pastor. Hey pastor, I just want to know what you think of this situation. It's called gossip and we hide it under the guise of, well, I really just want to know what's best for that person.

You know, I really don't know how to handle this situation and I don't want to screw it up. And I think people do it a lot. And it poisons other people's minds against other people that they didn't even know they did the thing. like I praise the Lord that I don't know a lot of stuff that you guys do and if you're working it out with your spouse and you're working it out with the people in your life and you're confessing your sin to God and to one another and getting forgiven, I don't need to know and you don't need to know and if you have a situation that requires some anonymity you know there's people who you can tell a story without naming names because you know what if you sin against me and I tell somebody else about it and then we work it out well now I've got a mess to clean up because now I've poisoned somebody else's mind against you and it's very easy to have this happen it happens easiest within couples I think because a couple thinks well that's my spouse I need to be able to tell them everything and stuff like that and I don't think you need to I don't think you need to tell your spouse everything that you know about somebody else's sin I think there's ways to talk about it that conceals and protects that person a little bit especially if they repent now there's a problem in America right now with what we'll call celebrity Christianity so when you have these celebrity Christians that get up and they say really heretical things publicly and things like that, sometimes they need a very public rebuke.

That's not what this verse is about. That's not what Peter's saying. Peter's not saying love covers a multitude of sins, so don't expose some guy like Ravi Zacharias, an abuser of women, a rapist. Okay? Functional rapist, at least. Not in the sense that some people think of it as forcible.

So that doesn't mean protect predators and wolves who will come in not sparing the flock. That's not the kinds of offenses we're talking about. We're talking about your dear brother or sister in church, your spouse at home, your somewhat wayward child where you don't have to publicize everything they're doing wrong. You don't have to make sure everybody knows what a rotten wife you have or what a horrible husband he is sometimes or whatever it happens to be, that there's ways to try to help the person and love the person.

And there's ways to get help if somebody's sin is really affecting you. This isn an admonishment to constantly ignore it But the root of it is love Because when I love you I actually want to see you restored to fellowship I want to see you granted repentance. I don't want to just see you go down. I mean, there's some ministries out there that need to go down.

Okay? I mean, I love, I'll try to say I love Joel Osteen because he's a fellow image bearer of God, but I'd like to see his whole ministry just go down. Not because I don't like him, it's actually because I love people. I care about people. So I want false teaching to go away. That's okay.

I'm talking about when you're dealing with your believing brother and sister. And that's what Peter's talking about. And I think it's particularly important for a church. Turn to Hebrews 13.1 while you're paging there. I think this becomes particularly applicable to church. And I think in the context of 1 Peter, when it's followed up immediately by the exercises of the gifts that the Holy Spirit gives to the people in the church, we can apply this particularly to the church.

That churches fail for a number of reasons, probably. and some of you are here, this is a pretty brand new church, so most of you are here and you were at another church at some point not that long ago. We could probably make a nice list of things we think churches shouldn't do and we could probably start our church with a good basis of things we don't want to fail at that we've seen other churches do. One of them is they teach bad doctrine.

They depart from the purity of the word. But another one is people just don't love each other. and part of not loving people is being unwilling to go to them and actually confront them about something in their life and actually say hey brother forgive me if I'm wrong but I just want to bring something up and just be honest and say hey I'm really scared I'm scared you're going to get mad at me I'm scared you're going to not like me all of a sudden this is really hard for me but there's something I see that I want to bring up because I actually think that God's word has something better for you than what you're experiencing right now. And there's a way you can try to approach people where they realize, like, man, this guy really loves me.

And Jesus actually says you'll win your brother as the result. So that's what we want. We want to cover sin in the sense that we don't have to blab about it, but not ignore it. Hebrews 13 verse 1 the author of Hebrews says let brotherly love continue more love and he says do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers for thereby some have entertained angels unawares which is a neat verse well there's the show hospitality to one another without grumbling that's what Peter says in 1 Peter 4 9 in the context of loving your brothers and sisters you show hospitality Open your home to people.

I've noticed within this small body of people, not all of which are even committed to each other yet, through the covenant, there's people getting together at each other's homes and trying to get to know each other and play games. And we do Bible study things. And we read the attributes of God by pink. And we go to the abortion clinic. We're trying to do things together to show hospitality.

We don't hope for it, but if one day one of us in this church is sent to jail for our faith, like a pastor in Canada is right now, I hope that the rest of the church is going to realize we need to be hospitable to the family. This family is suffering the loss of the husband or the wife right now. Can we all take a little extra time out of our week to go and help them out?

I know we've got to, if people have babies, we're going to want to do things for babies. There's lots of events where we show hospitality to one another. It's really not an American thing to do anymore. Like if you wake up and your eye is not on your phone the entire day, you're counter-cultural now. So can we be counter-cultural for the sake of Jesus and loving one another?

Hebrews 13.3 makes me think, I hate to keep bringing it up, it's not really a sermon topic, but Pastor James Coates, Hebrews 13.3, remember those who are in prison. The Holy Spirit knew that we'd be sitting in church relaxing, having comfort, we have food that's going to be ready when we're ready to do it. And He knew that we'd forget that there's Christians right now who can't do exactly what we're doing, and they're actually suffering for doing what we're doing.

He says, remember them as though you're in prison with them. So this is something you should remember. It's brought to our mind because this is odd in the West. The Christians have been in prison and persecuted for thousands of years now. And we forget because we have it so good here. If you want to look at Romans 12 sometime, there's a lot of ways to love people there.

Turn to 1 Corinthians 13. if somebody said you have one one sermon to preach about what love is and you can't just go to the gospels and just preach whatever Christ did to people directly I'd turn to 1 Corinthians 13 it's a great passage to read at weddings even at a non-believer's wedding they'll allow you to read this kind of stuff I partially exegeted at my brother's wedding and I had people who I'm sure don't know the Lord coming up and thanking me telling me good job it an easy passage but let look at it Okay the people in Corinth are fighting That's the problem here. So whenever, here's another one, when people tell you, let's get back to the first century church, say, well, which one, Corinth? Corinth required chapters and chapters of rebukes from the apostle, right?

Let's just do church the way God tells us, right? but they're fighting. One guy wants to be the guy in front, and another guy wants to be the guy in front. Somebody else wants to shout from the back, and somebody else wants to say that they've got this really cool gift of prophecy, your tongues and these things. And Paul says, if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but I have not love, I'm a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

Annoying noise is what you are if you don't have love, and you have even the greatest, most miraculous-seeming gifts that are possible. If I have prophetic powers, right? I think the coolest thing that ever happened is the prophets. The fact that men actually predicted the future like non-stop in the Old Testament. That's amazing. If I have prophetic powers and I understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains which none of us even have that kind of faith it says but have not loved I am nothing so you can go to seminary and you can know all this stuff you can have the 1689 memorized and you can dance circles around everybody else in here on it you can argue with Presbyterians and you can think you're right at the end when they do the baby baptism thing.

You can prove Arminianism is a heresy. You can do whatever you want. If you don't have love, you're a noisy gong, and you have nothing. You are nothing. There are people in this world who don't exhibit love, even though they're right about things. He says, if I give away all I have and deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. you can be a martyr in the name of Jesus and it's worthless if you don't have love if you did it for your own glory not the glory of Christ and not the love for the brothers we've got to check ourselves in this area we've got to check ourselves in this time of persecution be persecuted for Christ not for your bad attitude.

And then Paul tells us what love is. He says love is patient. And kind. I like the King James one. It says long-suffering. It's a neat word, long-suffering.

Love suffers long. Jesus suffered long with you. It's kind. It's not nice. Learn the difference between what kindness and niceness is and teach that to your kids properly. And use the words correctly.

They're different. One of them is utterly biblical and you should do it and the other one is actually kind of silly and you probably don't need to worry about it. Niceness carries even a connotation of deceit behind it. Love does not envy or boast. This is one of the big problems in the Corinthian church and it's a problem everywhere. And some of you, maybe you figured out how to not outwardly envy and boast. but you do it inwardly.

Some of us boast in our humility. We actually look forward to opportunities to say things that make us sound humble. Be careful of that. Love is not arrogant or rude. It doesn't mean love it doesn't mean that you try to be rude either. Sometimes you're rude unintentionally and guess what?

It's still sin. When somebody comes to you and tells you, I think you're being rude, you may want to work it out. It doesn't mean you have to believe it for sure. But if people are getting that impression from you, listen to them. Your personal relationships are important. it does not insist on its own way this is love is still the subject it is not irritable or resentful this is a tough one and when you think about irritability I want you to look at the life of Jesus Christ the man who didn't have a place to lay his head to sleep and yet he perfectly was never irritable we get irritable if we haven't eaten in three hours or whatever What did we say?

We say hangry? It's like our new excuse for being angry. Because, well, I was hungry. It's supposed to be funny. It's horrible. You know, I get the Snickers commercial.

I get the idea behind it. But it's sin. If you couldn't eat for a whole week, you're not supposed to be irritable. You get it? You're not supposed to be unrighteously angry with people just because you're hungry. Jesus wasn't.

He fasted 40 days and he wouldn't succumb to the devil. If you need to eat, eat. don't put yourself in an environment where you're going to sin if you know that not eating is tough for you I don't suggest you never sleep so you can try to fight irritability while you're tired don't try to get some rest God gives us beloved sleep but man when you have that day that you didn't get to sleep the night before and you didn't get to have a great meal that morning you're still responsible to not be irritable if you want to be loving that day if you want to follow Christ it says don't be resentful In some versions it says love does not keep a record of wrongs When your brother comes to you seven times do I forgive him seven times Peter said and Jesus said you forgive him seventy times seven times So does that mean you're supposed to forgive him 490 times and then the 491st you tell him forget it? I remember when I first married Erin and she asked me to forgive her for something and I said I did and she said, have I hit 70 times 7 yet?

We talked about that verse a lot. And I said, I stopped keeping track. Resentment is one of the killers of a relationship. Because what resentment means, and this is for the Latin scholars, resentment means to re-feel. If you look at the etymology of it. So you're re-feeling something that happened before.

So 10 years ago, or 10 days ago, or 10 hours ago, something happened that hurt you, and then somebody today did something that reminded you of it, and you re-feel what you felt before. And then the person standing right in front of you, whether it was them that did it before or not, pays the price. So your dad didn't love you enough, now your husband pays for it. or maybe your wife pays for it, because you're angry at somebody from 30 years ago, or 10 years ago, or whatever it is.

The key to putting away resentment and bitterness is that you have to learn how to forgive things. And in the cases where, depending on how you define forgiveness, the transactional forgiveness is impossible, it's something you still have to purpose in your heart, that you're not going to hold that against people. And you know that you're being resentful when somebody looks at you and says that they think that you're over-exaggerating the current situation.

When you've done something and someone is... and you're angry and the person says, why are you making such a big deal out of this? That's your chance to stop. And instead of getting mad at them, to think to yourself, Am I maybe making too big a deal out of what just happened? Because in my heart, I'm still bothered by something they did before. I'm still unhappy that he did this or she did that.

So deal with those things. And then when you deal with them with your person that you care about and love, they don't come up so much. Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing. That means you do not cheerlead people. who are doing evil. You don't support people who are going into an iniquitous relationship. You don't support people who want to deny God's design for personhood.

You don't support people that suddenly think that they want to be a man when they're a woman or vice versa. You don't support people who want to do things that are bad for them. You don't rejoice. You rejoice with the truth. Remember I read a thing, a guy said he was at a restaurant and the waiter said he was getting married. And the guy asked the waiter, like, what's your fiance's name or something?

And the waiter's like, oh, his name is Ethan or whatever it was. Sorry to pick a name that wasn't that Ethan. I always try to pick a name if somebody's not in the room. And I don't remember the story, but the point was is that this guy made this point. He's like, I just went ahead and congratulated him instead of rebuking him. He was like proud of himself.

And he's a Christian guy. He's an evangelist guy. I was shocked. Like this guy's heading into destruction and you're going to congratulate him? I mean, if the best you can do is just try not to make a face and then not say anything, then okay, fine. It's fine with me.

We all have different levels of faith and we all have different times we're more willing to speak up about something. But congratulate somebody for doing one of the most self-destructive behaviors behaviors in the history of the world. That's horrible. That's hateful. You love people. You don't rejoice at wrongdoing.

You rejoice with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. If you're going to be a member of Covenant Bible Church and you love people, and if this is true, 1 Corinthians 13, 7, that love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things, and that love never ends, then you're going to be a happy member of Covenant Bible Church for a long time.

And you're going to have really good relationships with your brothers and sisters in Christ. And it's all going to come from whether you purpose in your heart that I'm going to love people. And I'm going to tell you what, people are going to make it hard. And I get it. Right now it's easy. It's the honeymoon phase.

We have a nice meal. It's not boring yet. There's new people that we haven't met yet. We've got Austin and Eli here, and it's exciting to have people we haven't talked to much. And I even brought a game tonight to try to play that I'm supposed to evaluate on my blog. And maybe we'll play a game.

And it's fun. And nobody here has really rubbed each other the wrong way too much yet. And we haven't had enough to argue about yet. And we haven't had enough decisions to make where all of a sudden, I don't kind of like that guy that much today. So you have to purpose in your heart that you're going to love unlovable people because we're all unlovable.

And apart from Jesus Christ sanctifying you and all the brothers and sisters in here, you have nothing to offer anyone. We'll just skip to verse 13. 1 Corinthians 13, 13. You guys can memorize this one. It's not that long. He says, so now faith, hope, and love abide.

They remain. They hang here. he says these three but the greatest of these is love God puts a premium on love in the Bible. Only a couple verses that say God is something, and God is love appears at least twice that I can remember. It's an important aspect of who God is. It's utterly foundational to what Christ did for you, what Christ did for other sinners, and it's your only hope in every relationship you have is if there's love.

It won't always look the same, but if you do love people, you will find what it should look like in each situation. Pray with me. Father, thank you for your love for sinners. Thank you for the love of Jesus Christ for sinners and the Holy Spirit's love. Most of all we thank you for the Trinitarian love the intra love that is unbreakable unchangeable that is perfect unmixed with any impurity whatsoever perfect love, perfect example of the relationship that we all want to imitate in this world.

Father, we thank you that despite your great love, for your son, that you would crush him in our place. We thank you that because of what he did, you exalted him and gave him a name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess. So we thank you, Father. We pray that you would fill us with love, that you would pour out into our hearts the love that the Holy Spirit pours into those who know Christ.

Amen.