What’s Love Got To Do With It

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Good morning. I, too, like the Hay family. I'm struggling with allergies, hence the glasses, but kids tell me they make me look more important. And Emma says, when I make a point, that I need to do this. Okay, so that's your cue to listen when I take those off, but I can't see you, so... Well, my name is Daniel Oster, and I am a deacon here at South Burleson Baptist Church, and it's It's my pleasure to be in front of you this morning and I was going to start off by asking us maybe to be a little charismatic and I'm going to name some songs and if you've heard this song, I want you to raise your hand if you like it. You can raise your hand enthusiastically, maybe a whoop or whatever. If you don't believe raise your hand in a Baptist church, you can just nod your head. All right? So and all these songs have something in common. I'll start off. Let's see here.

I think I Love You by the Partridge family. Okay. Okay. She loves you by the Beatles. Oh, man. I saw some Beatles hands go up. I just called to say I love you Oh Steve you wonder you can sit down Lindsay Love loves love story by Taylor Swift Okay. All right. All right That was a younger crowd that just raised their hand What's love got to do with it Tina Turner? I should

Love me tender Elvis Alright? Crazy little thing called love. Alright? We found love by Rihanna. Did I say that right, Emma? Okay. Not as many hands. I will always love you. Dolly Parton. Or Whitney Houston. The last one today, and it kind of sets the title for our sermon, I Want to Know What Love Is by Forner. I want to know what love is. And I'm not... And Paul is going to show us today in 1 Corinthians 13. I was obviously raised in the 80s by a mother in her 20s. I listened to many of these songs as loud as the Chrysler van could go. And so all these songs with Tina and Stevie Wonder are very familiar. Actually, we were playing them all day yesterday for our kids, so they got to hear them too. But today we're going to be talking about love in our series about the body. And so when we talk about the body, that is a metaphor for the church. And last week we were in chapter 12 of 1 Corinthians and we talked,

Paul brought out the body in the church, talking to the church of Corinth. And was really dealing with their arguments with spiritual gifting. And it was really in what role that played in church and it was cause and division. And so he was addressing members of the body. And we talked about some of those members feeling like they weren't qualified, right? And they're on the outside and we encouraged those people today that if you feel that way you need to try something because the Lord is in it and He equips you well. And then maybe if you feel like you're doing too much, like a decathlete in our church to encourage you to share ministry and what that looks like. And so today in 1 Corinthians 13 we're going to be talking about love. We use the word love in a lot of different ways. For instance, I love Chick-fil-A, right? It's manna from heaven, deep fried in peanut oil.

That's so delicious, right? I also love my wife, and I probably should have put that one first. I love my wife, right? I also love hiking. I love burleson. I love my mother, right? We use the word love in a lot of different ways, but it kind of means something different in each one of those. And we're going to explore today on what Paul talks about when he's talking about love. Now most people are familiar with 1 Corinthians 13. It's a lot of times referred to as the love chapter. If I had a deeper voice that would have sounded really cool. But the love chapter, right? And we have familiar text, right? Love is patient, love is kind, love does not envy or boast. That's a very familiar verse, right? Where do you normally hear that kind of verse read? Weddings, right? What? So weddings, it was read in our wedding, you go to other weddings, you hear, you've been to a wedding where you hear those verses.

So doesn't it seem a little odd that we are trying to insert this love chapter in the middle of a series about church? Like wouldn't that be better equipped for like maybe Valentine's Day or Mother's Day? So for today I want everybody to look around, make eye contact with like two people, okay? Just look around, make eye contact, okay? because when we go through this chapter today, the context in which it was written was not to a husband and wife, it was specifically to the church and how to love each other, right? So when we read through this today, the text was written to the body for the body. So this wasn't written specifically for wedding ceremonies, but to encourage the body and its members, okay? So the reason why it's, is because the church here, remember Corinth was in turmoil. There was a lot of division, a lot of fighting, jealousy, anger, and power positioning on many issues, right?

And we talked about last week, this is unfortunately, this struggle for unity is true today. And so to help us understand this a little better, I want us to think about Bob Ross. And he's actually been using another illustration before, but I thought what I wanted us to do, and if you don't know who Bob Ross is, he is an artist and PBS for many years, and he would start with a blank canvas, and in his soft tone, he would start painting, and he would end up with a beautiful landscape picture, right, and he would say things like, you don't make mistakes, you make happy accidents, right? So if you're ever stressed, go to Netflix, just watch 30 Minutes and Bob Ross, and you know, it's kinda calming. But the reason I bring this up is I want us to picture Paul, like Bob Ross here, maybe you can even put the hair on Paul, that when he is laying out 1 Corinthians 13,

it's as if he's painting a picture of love on the canvas. Okay? So let's begin here in verses one through three, in 1 Corinthians 13. And if you don't have a Bible, there should be one in front of you, in the pew in front of you. If you don't have one at home, you certainly can take that one with you. We have 20 Bibles, we'd love for you to have one. All right, 1 Corinthians 1 through 3 says, "'If I speak in tongues of men and of angels, "'but have no love, I'm a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. "'And if I have prophetic powers "'and understand all mysteries, all knowledge, "'and if I have all faith as to remove mountains, "'but do not have love, I am nothing. "'If I give away all I have, I deliver my body to be burned, but I have no love, not love, I gain nothing." So, you know, these verses aren't normally read at a wedding ceremony, right? But we're still in the love chapter, and what Paul is doing to begin

is highlighting the main gifts that they were fighting over, right? So we see some of these that we talked about last week, tongues. Not only tongues of men, but tongues of angels. So he's elevating these things. We see prophetic powers, prophecy, knowledge, and wisdom. And then he even takes it a step further and he says, even if I have enough faith to remove mountains, or even if I gave everything away, including my own body, to be burned without love, it's nothing. So if we really were to put this in a math equation, what Paul is saying is five minus one equals zero. So he says, you can have tongues, you can have prophecy, you can understand all mysteries, have faith and give everything away including your own body but if you have no love then it's worthless. So what Paul is establishing here is that love is necessary. No matter what talents we have or what we do as a church without love

it is nothing. So essentially there's no substitute for love right? So right theology is not a substitute for love. Spiritual gifts doesn't substitute love. robust ministries, right, don't substitute for love, even our good works. All those are really good things and so you can kind of feel the tension, especially to a church, who may, even churches who may be looking like they're doing the right things, but if there's no love in it, Paul is saying it is for nothing. So Paul establishes here at the very beginning of the chapter that he's declaring that love is essential to the Christian church. Now he begins to continue to paint this picture in detail love. So let's look at verses, the familiar verses in 4 through 7. It says, Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or

resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things. Love believes all things. Hopes all things and endures all things. So important note here is when Paul is using these words when he's writing he's using the verb form not the noun which means that these words require action. So you could write it so you could read it like love acts in patience right love acts in kindness right. So so as he begins to as he continues to paint this canvas of love I just wanted to maybe I wanted to pick two of these out we're not gonna have time to go through each one to kind of just better understand what Paul is saying. So let's take patience. There's a man by the name of Robert Ingersoll and he's a well-known atheist and he gives a lot of speeches and ecologist and in the middle of his speech he'll say, I will give God five minutes to strike me dead for the things that I've said. And he

continued talking when the timer goes off and nothing's happened he then begins to say like if there really is a powerful God don't you think that he would strike me down for taunting him for doing this, right? And you can kind of picture yourself maybe if you were in that audience kind of the anger, the angst that that would cause you. Maybe you were hoping that he really did get what he was asking for. But we read in 2nd Peter 3-9 it says, The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as we count slowness, but is patient towards you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. So even God, not even God, God, even this guy, that he, God is having patience with him in hopes that even somebody like him may come to know the Lord, right? Normally we put patience in a box of standing in the long line at Starbucks and not throwing a fit or maybe you let pedestrians walk in front

of you in a car, you know, like, like you're some saint for this, for these small patients, but what Paul's charging the church with is to demonstrate the same patience that God demonstrates with us. And this even goes for people that we don't maybe would qualify as they deserve our patience or our time. And you know we talked about this a little bit in a Bible study this morning is really Jesus's patience with the people who were ridiculing Him as He's carrying across, as they put a thorn of crowns on His head, as they're mocking what he's doing. He had the authority and the power to send fire from heaven if he wanted to, yet he was doing his act out of love and he was patient with him. That's the same patients that were called to. All right, so let's look at one more. Let's look at not boasting or arrogance or swelling up or maybe your Bible say puffed up. Ronald Reagan told a story one time that when

When he was in Mexico, he gave this speech. And when he was done, no one really clapped. And he sat down, he says, it's kind of an awkward silence. And so when the next guy got up to speak in Spanish, Ronald Reagan had made it a point that I am going to stand up and I'm gonna clap really loud for this guy, so he didn't have the same experience I did. So when the guy finished, Ronald Reagan said he stood up and he was clapping loud. Was the last one to finish and he sat down And the guy next to him said, I don't know if I would have done that if I were you. And he said, why? He goes, because he was interpreting your speech. So here's Ronald Reagan, you know, standing up clapping at his own speech. And sometimes, and that's what arrogance, that's how silly arrogance looks like in our lives, right? It's as if we're just standing up saying like, oh, can you believe, look at me.

Look how awesome I am, right? Arrogance is focused on self-promotion. Proverbs talks a lot about this. Chapter 16 verse 18 says, pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. So when we sometimes will picture boasting or arrogance, we kind of maybe picture something like an unlikable person who is maybe trying to show off how much money they make or talk a lot about themselves. But Paul's cautioning the church here specifically on being careful on doing the church things and looking for and being puffed up by that. So the spiritual gifts, the elevated spiritual gifts. And what happens in, what can happen in church is if you're doing something that you're really wanting attention for someone to say thank you and you don't get that, it can create some bitterness, some resentful, maybe you don't feel appreciated. But when you're doing these things for the Lord,

those feelings don't creep in, right? Matthew 6, 1, Jesus says, be careful not to perform your righteous acts before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward for the Father in heaven. So Jesus talking to the Pharisees even about praying in public about this idea of being seen for what you're doing. So love, our second point here, is that love is sacrificial. When we moved to Texas, My dad pastored a small church and a house church, I mean a house probably was like 900 square feet, it was a church of like 20 people. And the only people in Sunday school our age, my sister who's over here, was a couple in their 50s, Jim and Sonya Bicklin. And every week they would prepare a Sunday school lesson for just my sister and I. And I think back and I think like how could they, I mean, there was no reward in that for them, right? I probably didn't pay attention a lot, you know,

like they never got any type of, you know, thank you so much, I know from me, but you know, for them to, I know in their heart that they did it because it was to glorify the Lord. And I think that that is important for our attitudes in church is to be used in a way that is only glorifying and give praise to our Father. So let's continue reading here in verses eight through 13. It says, love never ends as for prophecies, they will pass away. As for tongues, they will cease. As for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but we know the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love." So I was reading this chapter originally, I get to the end there and it says, love is the greatest and I ask like why? Why is love the greatest? I know this is the chapter of love but at the very end to bring in faith and hope and then make this declaration that love is the greatest. I just really couldn't understand why. Paul just kind of throwing this out there. I mean it would be like me saying something like Wendy's Waterburger and Sonic. I know these three, Waterburger is the greatest. And most would agree, if you're from Texas, they would agree with that David. I got an amen from David in the back. But what, I mean, like, why would I say that, right? Like, I felt like we get to the end and it's just like, you know, he just says, and love is the greatest. And it takes us to go back into the verses right before that.

Let's look at verse 10. It says, But when perfection comes, okay. So what happens when perfection comes? Right there after it says, the partial will pass away. Well we know in 8 that partials are prophecies and tongues and knowledge, right? So we know that those are going to pass away. So then what happens? It says in verse 12, 12, for now when we see an emirate dimly, but then face to face." Well, that then is pointing right back to when perfection comes. So when perfection comes, we see that the partial will pass, and then there's this, but then face to face. We see that phrase face to face used a lot in scripture. 3311 says, thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face. Genesis 32 30 so Jacob named a place of peniel for he said I have seen God face to face yet my life has been preserved. The prophecy in his equal 20th the end of 35 says and there will be enter into judgment with you face to face. Psalms 105 4 says seek

Lord and His strength seek His face continually. So it is at this point where Paul has been painting this canvas of love and he gets to verse 13 and he says, but the greatest of these is love. And it's at that point where Paul turns the canvas to the crowd and it is a picture of Jesus Christ, right? So So the answer to why love is greater than faith and hope is because when we, when the perfection comes, when Jesus Christ takes us home, when we are standing in the presence of our Savior, our faith is made complete, right? Our hope is no longer needed. And what else remains? Love. And not only is love remain but we will be staring love right in the face. Right, that is an eternal love. That's why, that's why it's the greatest is because Christ is love. Perfection is our Lord and He is love, right? Love is not a description of who Jesus is. Jesus is love and that's who we're going to be staring at face to

face, our Savior in the end. All these other things will pass away. You know, prophecies and tongues and any spiritual gift here is not needed because we are made complete in Christ in the presence of our Savior. So then the question comes, okay, so what does this mean for me here at South Burleson Baptist Church, right? Well, let's take our three points and let's draw a few applications. The first one being, if we said love is necessary, so if love is necessary, then church without love is worthless. That's a powerful statement, But we see Paul declaring that very early, right, with his math. So take, for instance, VBS that we're doing this summer. If we had 150 kids, if we tell Bible stories, if we feed them and we provide a place, we provide shade when it's hot. If we do all those things without the love of Christ, we might as well not even do it, right?

If we were to say, look, we're a Baptist church, Baptist churches do VBSs, we got to do VBS, and we're trying to check that box, it might as well not do it. Now the one thing that, the one thing I'll say when our families started coming here the beginning of last year, and when people would ask us, hey, what do you, how do you like your church, how's the new church, what's it like? A common description that I gave is it is a loving church, right? I felt like the characteristic of this church before we came was just immense love. You come in here and you just feel loved. What a great testimony for a church, right? How great would that be for us to continue that and that be the strongest characteristic of our churches to be loving. When people come in, if we're ever asked the question, why are you like this? Why are you all so loving? Why are you so nice that we don't point to ourselves but we point to the Father in

heaven? as they were beneficiaries of the same love that we're trying to demonstrate. Okay? So the second one would be, we said love is sacrificial. So if love is sacrificial, then the focus is on others. Right? Here we are a few minutes from the end of my sermon and I know a lot of y'all are worried that I didn't use a sports illustration. So I'm going to do that now. Terrell Owens was a wide receiver for multiple teams, including your Cowboys. And he was quoted many times saying, I love me some me, right? I love me some me. And the truth is we all kind of love us some me, right? But a church full of Terrell Owens, you would hear things like, If you want to make me happy, then you would do fill in the blank, right? If this church actually listened to what I had to say, fill in the blank. Do they not understand how much I do for this church? Right? This is my favorite one.

It is my God-given right. That sounds like a Texan right there. That's my God-given right. Well, sacrificial love isn't about loving ourselves, but it's about loving me some you. I don't know if that would make a good t-shirt, but it said, loving me some me, loving me some you. And we finally get to the answer for Foreigner and their question, I want to know what love is. 1 John 13, I mean 1 John 3 16 says, this is how we know what love is. It's like they're addressing the song directly. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. So that is our God-given right, is to lay down for our brothers and sisters, and to live sacrificially for each other in this church. So the encouragement here is to let us live out sacrificially for the love towards each other. The last one here is we talked about love is eternal.

And if love is eternal, it can only be of God. It's at this point where you may feel like the go forward is to take these verses and to take patience and kindness and an envy and boast and create a do and don't list and maybe think of ways that you can be better. And as you make that list, you're gonna feel overwhelmed. Some may be thinking like, well, church did its goal. It made me feel guilty for not doing something. It told me to do something that I can't possibly do. And that's good because that is true, because you can't do these things on your own will. And the beauty here is that the weight of that pushes you, points you back to the object of Paul's painting, right? You can't love out of our own ability, the way that Christ loves us. The only way you can love like that is to lean into hit into him. and just utilize that the Holy Spirit that you've been given to love well.

So we know that this love is an unnatural way for us, right? It may come harder, but we can also feel relief and understanding in our dependence of Christ. See, the love we're talking about is only found through God and can only be accomplished through the Holy Spirit. So this is an outward flow of love that we have benefited from. The way we know how to better love is to love the way that Christ loved us. Like we don't have to manufacture this love, right? It's been demonstrated for us. And the way we know it is we continuously just dive into His word and we see the love of Christ starting at the beginning of the Old Testament all the way through. And to know that one day when perfection comes that we're gonna be staring at our Savior face-to-face motivate us to love others well, right, to love others more than ourselves and as a hard thing to do. You know, we live in it, we live in a society that's very

individualistic and so I encourage you not to feel the weight of that but to know that you don't have to do it alone and as a church we do it together. You know, we are members of the body, we have strengths and weaknesses and we hope to complement those strengths and weaknesses in the way that we serve and work together with the sole purpose of being a church that reflects Christ and points to God for anything anybody ever says good about what we do and that's incredibly important. So I hope that this love chapter has maybe a different, seen it maybe through a different lens for the first time could be an encouragement of our church to model the love of Christ well for each other. So let's go and pray. God, I thank you for giving us, I thank you for your love. I thank you for your son Jesus and how that love was demonstrated for us. Lord, and we struggle to live a sacrificial life.

Lord, and we know that even in a body like church believers, it can be difficult. But God, you've called us to a dependence of you and we know that you've not asked us to do anything that we can't do through you. I ask, I pray that we are a church that loves on each other well, that loves on Burleson well, God, and can just be a painting that points people to Christ when they look at us and we thank you. We just thank you for the eternal hope that we reach your name up here. To our time of invitation, I want to encourage you, you know, really that last point of just we cannot do it on our own. I think Daniel said it very well, that if all you heard in a sermon was just, I'm guilty, right? Or, like, I can't do enough, then on one hand we're saying yes and amen, right? Yes, you cannot do it on your own. But on the other, let's not miss the gift, right? You can't do it on your own.

The Lord has to do it for you. The Lord has to do it in you. But as a church man, that's our motto. We're pretty messed up people. And so I would just encourage you during our time of invitation, if there's something the Lord is calling you to do, whether that's you want to come forward to become a part of our church, become a part of our body, you want to be baptized. If you want to, if you just need prayer, if you want to give your life to the Lord, that can all happen. I can help you do that. I'm going to be standing right there during our time of invitation. gonna sing a handful of songs and as we do I just want to encourage you just do what the Lord is telling you to do be obedient let me let me pray for us and then we'll stand and sing Jesus thank you for this time and we ask that you would help us just to listen to your spirit and be obedient It's her name that we pray.

Something happened and now I know He touched the end He wrote a sentence and he's feeling terrible A sentence and he wrote a note I will never see He touched me, oh he touched me And I know the joy of the master Something happened and now I know He touched me anyway Sing that again He touched me, oh He touched me And oh, the joy that floods my soul Something happened and now he touched me and made me go