Discovering the Spirit-Filled Life XXI, Lessons Learned In Loving

You'll want to read your Bible carefully in this passage, and it will change your life. If you can follow with me for just 30 minutes right now, let me read it. I know a few more beautiful passages of literature anywhere, in any culture, at any time. You know, the Bible is not just a book that Christians snuck out of Rome and held on to on their own. The Bible is, now listen, younger Christians, listen to this, when you get challenged in your faith, okay, people say, why do you believe all that stuff? Do you know that the Bible is the most authenticated book we've ever received from history? There are no books that have more evidence of being true than the Bible. I'm talking about Homer and Socrates and all these people that wrote great ancient literature, none. We have no more, in fact, we have far less authentication than the Bible. This book has proof that says it's true. This is what is written about love. Now I will show you the most excellent way. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have faith that can move mountains but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames but have not love, I gain nothing. 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 record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 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. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 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 childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection. Then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part. Then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain, faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love. Have you ever had growing up, or maybe you have one now, it would be unlikely, a magnifying mirror that you use for makeup? Thank you. How many of you know you have a magnifying mirror? Maybe you have one that's plain on one side and magnifying on the other? What happens when you look at your face in that magnifying mirror? I thought so. For all of us, don't we? Oh, I mean, every blemish, there it is. Every little piece of skin that shouldn't be there, every little unspeakable that's on your face, or whatever, it's all, and it comes out, and you think, everyone must see that on me. Dear ones, in my heart right now, when I read this passage of Scripture carefully, and really came to grips with it, it was like seeing my spirit in a magnifying mirror, seeing all the flaws. You see, there's not a person in the room tonight that can read this chapter and say, well, that's me. Is there? That's me right there. Just describe me. In fact, most of us would say that this proves that God is different than we are, because the love that this passage is talking about is not human love, it's divine love. It's what the Bible calls agape love, the love of God. More than any other mark, when you talk about God, you talk about, we like to talk about power, we like to talk about faith, and we like to talk about healing, and we like to, but if God is anything, if you ever want to know that God is there, love that authenticates the presence of God. I have people frequently who will come to North Way, and they'll say something of this variety, when I walked into place, I was hit with love. That is a great, a great compliment. I walked through the doors. I had a man, I don't know if he's a Christian or not, he was here on a professional call about a week and a half ago, he said it this way, he said, there is really something special. I pray tonight, as we look at this, just for a few moments, you'll sense that that something special is not just here, it's here, it's wherever you'll take it, wherever your company is of believers, wherever you partner with others, wherever you live tonight. Now, love appears right here in 1 Corinthians, between chapter 12, which Scott so capably elucidated for us last week, and by the way, next week, I'm going to talk again, I'm going to pick up where Scott kind of passed the baton on and talk about tongues and prophecy once again, and I'm going to tell you why Pittsburgh's not talking in tongues, all right? But I'm going to share with you some very positive things about that gift, and if you know someone who's real skeptical, you bring them next week, will you? Somebody says, well, you know, I'm too sophisticated for that nonsense. Okay? You bring them. And we'll trust the Lord to minister to them. I'm not saying we're going to march them up here and hit them over the head with something, okay? I'm not saying that at all. Don't bring them if that's what you think. Well, you see, 1 Corinthians 13 falls between 12 and 14 because—13 count, you put it? Why? Because God put a very clear bridge between what Scott showed us last week, which is the concept of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the full expression of them, which is spelled out very powerfully in chapter 14. So, in effect, 13 was the concept, 14 is the—I'm sorry, 12 is the concept, 14 was the action, and 13 is how you get there. 13 is how you get there. Notice I started by reading, and now I will show you a more excellent—my Bible says most excellent—way. And unfortunately, so many people—listen, some of you come from churches where the gifts have been thrown out the door because someone told you, well, the Bible says that they're all passing away and love is the better thing anyhow. Paul does not make the argument that if you love, you don't have to worry about the gifts. Is that true? I understand that. The gifts are an important part of our provision to make it. If you don't have spiritual gifts operating in your life, you will not be fully equipped to do what God wants you to do. The good news is the Holy Spirit's here tonight to help minister those gifts to you, that you can minister them to others. But neither does Paul say, let's all just go for the gifts, you know, let's hear it for tongues and prophecy and healing and words of knowledge, without love. In fact, he says, either of those is an error. The gifts without love and the love without gifts, they're both errors. Is that real clear? Please don't be among those who would just throw the whole thing out and dismiss it. Paul would say tonight that what he wants to see, what needs to take place in the church are the gifts operating in love. How many of you like vegetable soup? Sounds good, doesn't it? If you will, these are pretty basic analogies. The gifts are the vegetables, the gifts are your potatoes, your green beans, your celery clippings, what other things you put in there, Missy? Carrots, a few onions, all that stuff that you put in your vegetable soup. And the broth, you don't have the broth, you don't have soup. You got a bunch of vegetables. And as strange as it is, when the gifts of the Spirit are not operating in love, it's what it's like. It's like a soup with no broth. Now, in a positive kind of way, if you just have broth, it's not really complete, is it? I mean, I like broth. There's nothing wrong with broth, but isn't it a whole lot better with some vegetables in it? How many of you want the gifts operating in love in your life? Hear what I'm saying. It's a very important dimension that we too often miss out on. And we don't need to look very far today to find illustrations in the church, but I'm going to focus on personal application tonight. Now, I use the word agape. How many people are not familiar with what agape is? That's a new word to you. If you're a newer Christian, it's probably a new word. There are three Greek words for love. The first one, I don't think I made an overhead, but the first one is philio, from which we get a name of a very popular city or very famous city, I should say, in our country, which is Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. Philio is the kind of love that people have for each other. Back in the Greek culture, there was another word for love they had that was also familiar to us called eros or erotic love, sexual love. And that was a word that was used for a physical expression just like we use it today. But they didn't use this word agape very much because it describes something that they really didn't understand. And isn't it marvelous that the New Testament Christians basically introduced a new word to describe love? It was in their culture. It was in their dictionary, if you will. But it was a word they didn't use because they couldn't really find anyone that fit it. Self-sacrificing, self-giving, unconditional, that's what's being described in the first one. Let me first of all share with you here as you look with me carefully in your Bibles, making notes. Please make notes so that you'll be able to teach others as well. There's three specific breakdowns here in verses 1 through 3. The necessity of love. The necessity of love. Folks, we're looking in the magnifying mirror. If you want your soul to be examined by the mirror of God's Word so that you might be cleansed and made whole, I plead with you tonight, don't just write this off as something you already know. Number one, love is necessary for people who speak in tongues. The tongues person could not do without love. Look what it says. If I speak in tongues of men and of angels. Now, how many of you came from a situation, how many of you have ever been in a situation where people were abusing the gift of tongues? What do I mean by that? Well, they were kind of throwing it on people or they were disrupting meetings with it. They were being insensitive. And I don't know what it's like when Alan Muckler smashes that symbol in the middle of a song. He never has done that, but imagine if he did. I mean, it would be so obtrusive, wouldn't it? It would mess up the whole song. And that's what a tongue that comes out of place does. Paul's saying, if people that speak in tongues but don't have love flowing in their heart, boom, it's like hitting a symbol in the middle of a song. We don't need that. Then he goes on and says, the people who have knowledge could not do without it. The knowledge person could not do without love. Now, we're talking about knowledge here, not just the knowledge that you read in a book, but the knowledge of supernatural insight. All of this, by the way, listen, Paul is taking, you'll see here the same things that you would find in 1 Corinthians 12, verse 7, 8, 9. He's taking the gifts of the spirit and saying, these gifts without love are nothing. They're nothing. It doesn't matter how much insight you have. It doesn't matter how much you know about something or someone or some situation without love. Did you all read or follow along in the late 1988 season when a gentleman out on the West Coast prophesied that the world was going to end? Remember that the rapture was going to take place? Late 1988 was the 40-year reunion or anniversary of Israel's establishment. Remember that? And millions of Christians bought his book. You know, 88 reasons why the rapture is in 88. You still have your copy, Paul? I have a copy. Someone gave me one. They wanted to make sure I didn't miss that. I always appreciate that. And now there's 89 reasons why it's in 89. But there was a big flap about knowledge. Well, knowledge doesn't do much, folks. In fact, the Bible says it puffs up. You can't do, you can't. Knowledge is no good without love. It doesn't mean anything. It goes on and says this. Look, if I have faith, number three, the faith person could not do without love. Now, not so much these days, but how many of you know five years ago faith was a big thing? I mean, you were part of the faith camp. And I heard faith teachers. How many believe faith is necessary to the Christian life? How many of you have faith? How many believe faith is needed for miracles? I do. But you see, people who push faith without love, and they get this sort of arrogant sense in their spirit, well, God owes me this because I'm believing him. I'm not going to let him go. Faith without love profits nothing. How about the next one? If I give this, you might, this might relate. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Number four, people who would give, the giver, the giver cannot do without love. Have you ever toyed, as I have, with giving everything you owned away to say that you'd be pure in your motive? There were times in my walk with the Lord when I've considered that. You know, I wanted to just demonstrate to God and the world that I was not attached to physical things. And I know people who do that. But, folks, listen. If you do that without love, you gain nothing. What is your motive for giving? When the offering basket goes by here in 30 minutes or so and you put something in it, why are you doing it? I hope because if you don't, you'll profit nothing. And even more to the point, number five, the martyr, the martyr. And, you know, I wrestled with this because it seems to me if a person gave their life, what more can they give? What more of a sacrifice could they make? And especially when it says to give your body to be burned. But how many of you know there are people who give their life for causes every day and don't do it out of love? You know, just read the Islamic Jihad and some of their tenets of belief. You know, they believe that by dying for their cause, what? They're insured a ticket to heaven. How many of you, they have love in their hearts when they drive their trucks full of dynamite into a crowd of people? No way. You see, but even if you give your life because, you know, you want to make a statement about your allegiance to Christ. You have not love. Now, do you say, are you going to go to hell? No. We don't go to heaven or hell based on this. But you won't gain the martyr's reward, the crown that's talked about in Revelation. So, the point of this is all of these great supernatural kinds of things, supernatural giving, even to the point of giving your life, faith, knowledge and tongues and prophecies, no matter how much of that you have without love, folks, do you know that the Greek word for nothing is the word zero? Say zero. What does zero sound like? Nothing. It just comes off that way, doesn't it? Zero. That's literally the word there in the Greek. Zero. Zero. So that if you give, if you prophesy, if you have great knowledge, even supernatural knowledge, if I could stand here tonight, you know, and tell you exactly, Kathy, what you're thinking right now, as great as that might be, it's a great miracle, and I don't have love, it's nothing. Folks, let me stop and get everyone's attention for a second. If you're leading a home group, if you're working in the nursery, if you're painting signs, if you're hanging lights, if you're on a drama team, if you're at a typewriter, if you're dancing on the platform and you don't have love, it's a zero. Do you know what that did to me when I read that today? It shook me up. If I preach the greatest sermons, if Al plays the most beautiful music or Jan, whatever we do, what we do without love, we waste our time. I believe with all my heart that Satan would love to get us so busy in all the activities of it all that we lose love. You say, well, isn't God fair? I mean, doesn't he really know what's in your heart? It's our responsibility to be sure that what's in our heart is the love of God and not just some obligatory kind of service that we're pouring out because we want to feel good about ourselves. Jesus reduced me to love. Of course, we'd serve God a whole lot more if we spent a little more time being filled with this love. I've had to step back. This has been a sobering kind of experience for me. I come to morning prayer with a number of you at 6 a.m. I figure God's got to bless that. God's got to. I mean, that's Sacrifice City. This place is really a morgue at 6 a.m. practically. It's just like, whew. God must see me there in my sacrificial spirit. I read that today, and you know what that's saying to me? If I come, if I fasted for three days and nights, I have not loved. I know some of you must be thinking, well, how do you know that love's operating? How do you think that's a good thing to know? I want to know if I'm in love or not. I want to know if it's the love of God or am I just making this up? You people are considering missionary careers. There are going to be a lot of missionaries, I'm sure, with broken hearts because they went to the mission field out of some sort of duty or some sense of some grand challenge, but they missed love. What are the characteristics of the love I'm talking about? Once again, I urge you to write them down. They're right there in your Bibles, but it helps to see them. I made 13. I've heard lists that have 12 and lists that have 15. I made 13 to coincide with 1 Corinthians 13. So there's 13 characteristics in chapter 13. Number one, now as we go down this list, I want you to subconsciously mark the ones you know you need. Don't forget it because we're going to come back to it. Love is, let's all say it. How many of you are already in trouble? Love is patient. Love is patient. Now remember, and I was so blessed by this today, preparing this and thinking, you know, God is like this. Jesus was this way. Love is patient. Jesus personified God. Jesus was patient. Patient. Put up with stuff. Number two, love is kind. Kind means to be merciful or generous. A kind person is not withholding, you know. He's kind. He's interested. Number three, now there's seven not things coming up. Seven things that love is not in a row. Love is not jealous or envious is another word. It doesn't look at something else and say, that's what I want. I want what you have for me. Next, love does not boast of itself. It is not self-glorifying. And that's a very difficult thing. There's nothing wrong. There's nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with boasting in the Lord. But love does not say, well, I did this and I accomplished that and look at me and so on and so on. Next, love is not puffed up. It doesn't get a swelled head about itself. Its own esteem, you know. It doesn't look at itself as being more than he or she really is. Next, love is not rude. That's becoming a mark of our culture. How rude and crude can you get at times? Next, love is not selfish. I guess if there's one term that encompasses it all, love is not selfish. It does not take to itself. In fact, the characteristic of love is that it looks out for the welfare of the other. Number eight, love is not irritable. Go ahead and smack your spouse. Give her the elbow. Give him the elbow. Love is not irritable. Not easily angered, some Bibles say. Next, love keeps no record of wrongs. It doesn't keep a list when you don't do what you're supposed to do. Hello? Can I say there are probably people that will listen to this tape tonight, maybe even a couple of you here, that you have a mental list of people that have wronged you and you are still holding. You're not operating in love. And it's grievance. Next, there's four always now. Love protects. I like that. Love trusts or believes the best. Isn't that a wonderful thing to say? Love believes the best in every circumstance. Next, love hopes. And number 13, love endures. All things perseveres. Now, I purposely left verse 6 off of the list because it says something that is easily confused. It says, love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It's kind of like saying the same thing in two different ways. But here's my interpretation. Love is saddened when another falls. It doesn't talk about it. It doesn't gossip and doesn't use it as an opportunity to slip in and point a finger of accusation. Now, folks, those 13 characteristics, well, we can't get them all up there at once, can we? Powerful, aren't they? Powerful. How many of you find at least one that maybe you're not quite there? Obviously. And we go down the list. Now, we're going to come back to this in a minute when we pray together for one another. But let me just conclude with this now. We've looked at the necessity of love. Now we looked at the characteristics of love. And finally, let me just end with this. The last several verses talk about the permanence. Number 3, the permanence of love. The permanence of love. Once again, those of us in ministry need to hear this very, very clearly tonight. You see, charismata or the gifts of the Spirit that are described in 1 Corinthians 12 and 1 Corinthians 14, those gifts, the Bible says here, let's look at it, prophecies they will see, tongues they'll be still, knowledge or words of knowledge they'll pass away. All that stuff's going to go. The charismata will end. When is that going to happen? Hello? It's important because some of you don't even know how to respond to people who say, well, when the Bible was finished, we don't need the gifts of the Spirit. Who's ever heard that? Come on. Do you listen to John MacArthur? Well, good. Someone said no. I say, good. Because you'll get thoroughly confused about what you believe if you go there and you come here and you go to some other places and talk about living in the whole counsel of God. Now, I don't have anything against John MacArthur, but I think what he says about this is unfortunately very, very confusing. He basically and many others that would associate with him say that when the Bible was completed, we don't need the gifts anymore. We don't need those things anymore. And I know he takes 14 lessons to describe his argument. I'm just going to tell you right now, when I read this, I don't believe, folks, that we've seen the full revelation of God yet. What this says to me is when I see face-to-face, when I'm no longer looking in the mirror, but I'm looking face-to-face, then I won't need the gifts. You see, the charismata, number one, are the grace gifts from the Holy Spirit for this present age. In the age to come, when we see Him face-to-face, we will live in the enduring agape of God, the agape love of God, love that is the context today of the gifts, love that comes from Father God, and love that is for now and the future. Listen, the gifts will end, but love never ends. Hallelujah. Though I could digress and get into a long apologetic about why I believe this, let me just say that when I read these words, it says to me, now I know in part, verse 12, then I shall know fully. When is the then? When you're no longer seeing in a mirror, but you're seeing in face-to-face. All right? So, when you don't need the tongues, when you don't need the prophecy, when you don't need the words of knowledge, when you don't need all the other things is when you see Him face-to-face. If you've seen Him face-to-face, you don't need that stuff. Hallelujah. But until then, let those gifts operate. Despise not the gifts of the Spirit. Well, let me end then. I'm sure some of you must be thinking, since love is permanent, since I want love to mark my ministry and who I am and all that I'm doing, how can I know I'm operating in love? We have one last overhead, I think, Nancy. Number one, let's put up one of these. Number one, folks, if this was something that was hard to do, then we'd all be in bad shape. I believe, number one, the beginning point of knowing that you're operating in love is to examine your heart. 2 Corinthians 13.4. Spend a little time saying, Lord, show me where my motive's gotten warped. Show me where I'm getting too far off on some tangent. Show me where I've held something against. Do you know if you give God a little bit of time every day to show you where your heart's getting hard, He will? I'm amazed at how even the spiritually-minded among us develop attitude problems because somebody hurts us or wrongs us. And if we don't let God show us that in our heart, you know what's going to happen? That attitude problem will stop the flow of love, and all that you're doing, it's going to profit you. Examine your heart. Is there anybody here that's still giving God that 30 minutes time of listening? Anyone still doing that? Bless you. Anyone? About a dozen of you. Give God that 30 minutes. Give it to Him. Say, Lord, just like I don't own my money, I don't own my time. I had a man sit in my office today, a very, a man most all of you would know, a very successful man, a man that has a growing national ministry. He said, you know what my most important resource is today? He said, it's not my money, it's my time. We're all identified with that. And it's not that he doesn't have some money. It's just my time. And how many of you know that even if you're not tithing your finances, which you should be doing, have you ever considered what it would be like to tithe your time to God on a daily basis? Boy, let's think about this. 24 hours a day. 2.4 hours a day. Wouldn't that be something? Well, that's another message. Number two, embrace suffering. I need to quickly conclude here because I want to give you time to respond. Embrace suffering. May I read for you as we leave that overhead up? Romans 5, listen. Do you want to be sure that the love of God is working in your heart? Listen to this. Not only so, Paul writes, but we also rejoice or embrace our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, character hope, and hope does not disappoint us because God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom He's given us. Folks, when you're suffering, it's an opportunity to grow in agape love. This is not milk. This is meat for some of you who have ears to hear tonight. The reason you're going through a suffering time in your life is because God wants to flush out your version of imitation love and put His love in your heart. How many of you like that? I sure don't. I don't like those flush-out jobs. But I want it. Don't you want it? Wouldn't you rather have God's agape love in you than anything else in all the world? And we're so hard and prideful and so on, sometimes it's only love or it's only suffering that lets that love come. And if we had time for testimonies, how many of you could say, I learned love like no other time when I suffered the most? That is a tough word. I believe it's the word of God. Number three, you grow in love as you exalt the Lord. Hallelujah. Why do we worship God here at Northwood? Why will we always worship the Lord? Because the Bible says, as we sing His great love, we show forth the covenant of God. We show forth in ourselves that love. As we sing of His, and I can find Scripture, Psalm 103 verse 4 tells us about it. Declaring His love and becoming an instrument of it. Do you realize that when you praise Him with a cleansed heart, that that love just flows through you like a chain? I've often told you, I've never met a discouraged praiser. Anyone that just purposes to praise the Lord, I've never met one that's depressed. The love of God is active. Well folks, 30 plus minutes is not enough time to give a profound chapter like this. But I want to end tonight by giving you five or six more minutes to go back and pray with a few others and say, you know, tonight I heard this, and this is what I need to take out of this message tonight. I'm going to have Paula leave up those three responses Maybe tonight you want to say, you know, I need to just give time to examine my heart, or I'm going through some hard times, I need to see that God's producing love in me, or I need to exalt the Lord. I'm going to ask Nancy to put up those 13 characteristics. And maybe you'll look up and say, well you know what I really need is, I need for God to give me a sense of love that's not easily angered or not irritable or whatever. Now folks, don't waste these next five or six or seven minutes. Let there be grace flowing one to another. As you share honestly, this is where I'm at with this love. This is too hard for me to handle. Tonight God wants to pour love into some people's hearts. Let's stand together. Let's turn into a circle of three or four. If you're a visitor, you don't need to do this and say something, but you need to do it and at least listen. Okay? Don't be embarrassed, please. Our folks are friendly. Share what you need to do in response to this message tonight, would you? Everyone do it. Don't leave and not share the blessing. Everyone do it. Find someone to pray with.