Outliving Your Life - Pt.2 | Rev. Terry K. Anderson

Gregory of Nazianzas who became patriarch of Constantinople, one of the celebrated

Capitodian fathers of the fourth century along with Basil the Great and Gregory of

Nisa was one of the most celebrated orators of the early church. He writes in regard to

this chapter on love that here we may read what Paul said about Paul. I submit brothers and sisters

that only a man in whose heart the Spirit of God has kindled a faith like Paul's could evidence a

love like Paul's and on the basis of his own experience of that love record its glories in

what may be called the New Testament Psalm of love. From the standpoint of literature this is one

of the most remarkable passages that ever came from the pin of man. It is characterized by poetic

beauty and scientific analysis. It seems almost irreverent to analyze it for it is full of beauty

and yet marvelous in technique. Paul's description of the action and behavior produced by love is

distinctly counter cultural. It speaks against the envy, pride and self-centeredness of the

Corinthian Christians and in so doing speaks clearly to our own generation as well. Brothers and

sisters in a society where so much is presented in terms of the self, self-awareness, self-esteem,

self-acceptance, self-image, self-realization, self-actualization, self-care, self-medicating to

present a way of existence in which a person lives for other people in a life of loving self

sacrifice is highly provocative for people who are concerned about themselves. Following the one

who gave his life as a ransom for us all will be humbling and undoubtedly costly in terms of human

recognition and progress in life as the world defines what love is. Paul is writing this letter

in response to a report from Chloe about problems in the Corinthian Church and he provides apostolic

guidance for dealing with those problems. In chapters 8 through 10, Paul addressed the issue

of eating food that had been sacrificed to idols. In chapter 11, he dealt with the issue of women

covering their heads and abuses of fighting around the Lord's Supper table. In chapters 12 through

14, Paul deals with the issue of spiritual gifts. Brothers and sisters, rather than celebrating one

another's gifts, the Corinthian Christians have become proud concerning their particular gifts

and dismissing the gifts of other believers. Therefore, spiritual gifts have become a divisive

influence in the body of Christ. There are three movements in chapter 13 on love. In verses 1

through verse number 3, Paul shows us the value of love. In verses 4 through 7, he shows us the

virtues of love and he ends with verses 8 through 13 revealing the victories of love. The whole idea

of these verses is that brothers and sisters, love is distinct from and superior to anything we can be

or do. Regardless of what we do, if it is not infused with and carried out through the love of

God, it is a colossal waste of time. Our love, your love for me, my love for you, our love must be

higher than the sensational, wider than the spectacular and deeper than the sacrificial. The

greatest gifts and the grandest deeds together with all their greatness and grandeur are nothing,

make us nothing and bring us nothing if love is absent. To love, to have or not have love is not

about emotions. Love is not about feelings, but about living and relating to other people in a way

that either does or does not reflect their great worth in God's eyes and if you don't see your

brothers and sisters through God's eyes, you'll never see them properly in your own eye. Hear

this because I worked on this line all week. You can put on a show of love without having it,

but you cannot have love without showing it. Somebody should have shouted right there. You

can put on a show of love without having it, but you cannot have love without showing it. The

English language has several variations of what love is. You can love someone sexually or you

can love someone familially or you can love someone affectionately as a friend or a co-worker or

you can love peach cobbler or you can love a catalan or you can love your shitsu or you can love

your cat. You can love your house. You can love being in a warm room with a nice book and a cup

of coffee. Those are variations of love, but the Greek has only three words for love. One is

eros, which is sexual love between a man and a woman. And then there's philas,

from which we get our word Philadelphia, which means brotherly love. But then there is agape.

Agape is the love of God. Agape is benevolent, well-intentioned towards another. You don't

have to feel anything to love like that. You've got to do something to love like that because love

is not about feeling, it's about doing. When you love your family, you don't always feel like going

to work. You just get up and go to work. My wife doesn't always feel like loving me. Your husband

doesn't always feel like loving you, but love is not about a feeling because feelings change.

Talk back to me if you can. You remember when you were in high school and you signed your

sweetheart's yearbook? Yours forever. Two years later, you forgot what they looked like. And when

you went to your 10-year class reunion, you said, thank you Jesus. Because feelings change. But love

when it is real is always looking out for the best interest of the one who is beloved. I love you.

Does not mean I always like you. I love you means I will not go out of my way to harm you and I

will do everything in my power to help you because love when it is real comes from God.

How can you love God whom you have never seen and hate, lie on, abuse, misuse, torture,

backbite your brothers and sisters who you see every day? You are not telling a lie, you are a lie.

And the truth is not in you. By this shall all men know that you are my disciple because you

have love one for another. Look with me again in verse number one. If I speak with the tongues of

men and of angels and have not love, charity, the King James says, I am a sounding brass and a

tinkling, clanging, noisy symbol. Paul says, no matter how great your oratory, no matter how beautiful

your speech or how brilliant your rhetoric without love, you are simply noise. Let me ask you,

have you ever been to a symbol concert? I mean, what the only instrument on the stage is a symbol? I

don't imagine you have because a symbol is nothing but noise. It crashes, it makes a noise that

there's no note in a symbol. It's impersonal. It's just noisy. There is no, there is no scale in a

symbol. It's just a lot of noise. And now in a concert, you need a symbol, but you need a flute.

You need a clarinet. You need an oboe. You need a violin. You need a percussion section. You need

a woodwind section because a symbol by itself is just noise, but with all the other instruments,

it becomes a symphony, which makes me to say to us this morning that in the church,

there is not a one person band because the whole church together is a symphony and anybody

operating outside symphonic sound is noise. And you can't listen to the noise and appreciate the

music. Somebody ought to help me talk here today. Sounding brass and a tinkling symbol. Listen to

me. Great oratory can move a person emotionally. Great rhetoric can move a person intellectually.

Great speech can move a person volitionally, but only great love can move a person spiritually.

Sounding brass and tinkling symbols were the same instruments used in the heathen worship.

Therefore, the person who exercises his tongue in a spiritual fashion yet does not do so with

the love of God in him is no better than a heathen worshiper. In fact, his worship is more

man centered than God centered. I'm trying to leave that point, brothers and sisters,

but there's a difference between gifted preaching and anointed preaching. Gifted preaching will

make you clap, but anointed preaching will make you shout. There's a difference between

gifted singing and anointed singing. Gifted singing will make you clap, but anointed singing

will make you cry because that's something God puts in the anointed that he does not give to

the gifted. I wish I had somebody to help me preach it. That was this banquet where a

renowned orator was invited to speak, and after he had spoken, he was asked by the audience

at the banquet for an encore. He stood and with perfect diction, with acute rhetoric,

with sweet elocution and erudition recited the 23rd song. People put their forks down

and clapped up roriously because of his diction and his elocution. An old preacher came from

the back of the room, got to the podium and recited the 23rd song. They picked up their

napkins and wiped their eyes. When he sat down, the man who had recited the song with

such elocution and diction asked somebody next to him, why? When I said it, they clapped,

but when he said it, they cried. And the preacher next to him told him, because you

knew the song, he knows the shepherd. And when you know who Jesus is and when you know

that the love of God has been shared abroad in your heart, there's something different

about being gifted and being anointed. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels

and don't love anybody, I'm a sounding breath or a tinkling symbol.

Verse number two, and if I have prophetic powers, if I understand all mysteries and all

knowledge and I have faith so that I could remove mountains, but I don't love anybody,

I'm nothing. That's strength of service in verse number one. But in verse number two

is energy of equipment. While prophecies and mysteries and knowledge in the service of

others is a good thing, people who use their gifts to establish their own superiority or

their own dominance over other people are not in accord with God's will. They will only

get an inflated opinion of themselves that will do nothing to help anybody else. A PhD

without some Geode makes you a smart devil. And the church is in danger of being destroyed

not by unlettered ignorance, but by unsanctified intelligence. That's intelligence that has

not been baptized in the grace of God. And when your intelligence has not been baptized

by grace, you think you're smarter than everybody in the room. And if you are the smartest person

in the room, you better hurry up and get out of there. If you are the only pebble on the

beach, if you are the wisest person in your circle, if nobody knows anything but you,

if you in a room by yourself, you in bad company, because God has spread out his gifts. And

a whole lot of folks want the exhibition gifts, gifts that people can see so you can stand

out above everybody else. You want the gifts of being a Sunday morning gifted person. But

we need some Monday morning gifted people. We need some folk who can cook. We need some

folk who can park and watch our cars. We need some people who clean the church. We need

some people who scrub the bathrooms. Those are spiritual gifts that are behind the scenes

that they never get any credit for. But if you do all of it to the glory of God, it does

not matter if men don't see it. I've been doing this long enough to know. I'm wise enough

to know that God can take some drunk off the street and stand him up in his pulpit to preach

circles around us. Because God uses whoever he chooses to you. As good as that choir got

through singing a minute ago, God could take every one of them out and get some girl dancing

on a pole. Put a choir robe on her. Sanctify and forgive her. And she'll run every last

one of us out of this church. Because what you do, if it's all about you, you get the

credit. But if it's all about God, God gets the glory. I'm trying to get through. You

didn't come here to hear me preach. You came here for a meeting. You got my email. I know

why you're here. You ain't fooling me. Thirdly, verse number three, if I give my body to be

burned, if I give away all my possessions and I don't have love, I gain nothing. We can

give away everything we own. Even our bodies to the altar of martyrdom. But if we do so

with our love in our hearts, it is all a spectacular waste of time. You may build great

cathedrals, large or small. You may build skyscrapers, grand and tall. You may conquer all the failures

of the past, but only what you do for Christ is going to last. You may seek earthly power

and great fame. The world may be impressed by your great name. Soon the glories of this

life will all be passed, but only what you do for Christ is going to last. Though your

songs and your prayers are heard and praised by men, they have no meaning unless you've

been born again. Center heed these words. Don't let this harvest pass. Only what you

do for Christ is going to last. Love when it is real expresses itself in action. Love

when it is true goes beyond what is expected to do whatever is necessary to reclaim the

beloved. When you love somebody, you have spiritual intelligence that moves you towards

a spiritual purpose. Spiritual intelligence means when you love somebody, you know everything

that's wrong with them. You know how crazy they are. You know how mean they can be. You

know their quirks, you know their idiosyncrasies, you know their hiccups, you know their foolishness,

you know everything about the person you love, but you love them enough to move them toward

becoming better. Can I help you with that? God commended his love towards us. Wow! We

were yet sin. Somebody ought to help me close here. God didn't wait for me to get my act

together. God didn't wait for me to understand the scriptures. God did not wait for me to

go to Sunday school or to have a Bible. God did not wait for me to get baptized. God did

not wait for me to get off drugs or to get off an alcohol. God did not wait for me to

get off the streets or to stop doing what I was doing. Wow! We were yet sin. Christ died

for us. I wish I had somebody to help me get happy here. I thank God for a love like that

because when I couldn't even love myself, He loved me. Even when I didn't know what

love was, He showed me. Even when I was incapable of expressing what was on my mind, He was

looking out for me. I wish I had one or two more witnesses here. My girlfriend died the

other day. My sweetheart Tina Turner went to wherever Buddhist people go. I almost said

went to be with the Lord but she went to wherever Buddhists go. I was in love with Tina because

she could shake that thing because she took a good job in the city, working for the man

every night and day. I never lost a minute of sleep. Just worried about the way the

things might have been. Big wheel keep on turning. Proud Mary keep on burning. Yeah,

you got it. There's some more Tina lovers in here today. But then Tina sang my other

song. What love got to do with it. I wish I could wake Tina up wherever she is right

now. I tell her what love got to do with it. Love was born in Bethlehem. Love was wrapped

in swaddling clothes. Love was laid in a manger. Love was presented to Simeon in the

temple. Love after some years was baptized by John in the Jordan River. Love stood there

in the Jordan when John baptized him. And the heavens opened and a dove descended. And

everybody heard God saying this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. Love went around

healing the sick, turning water in the wine. Love made deaf men hear dumb men speak. Love

calmed a storm on the sea of Galilee. Love fed 5000 men not counting women and children.

Love healed a woman who had an issue of blood. Love went to Jairus' house and took his little

girl by the hand and she came back to life again. Love went to a cross one Friday. Love

died on a hill called Calvary. They hung him high. They stretched him wide. He hung his

head. For me he died. That's love. You're going to help me close this, won't you? That's

not how the story ends. Three days later. Three days later. Three days later. Three days later.

Three days later. Heroes again. That's love. Love is on the right hand of God with power.

And every time I sin, love stands up at the right hand of God and said, I know he's done

wrong but I paid for it on Calvary. I know he deserves to die but I took his place on

the cross. Is there anybody here know what love got to do with it? Is there anybody here

know Jesus loves you? Jesus loves you? Jesus loves me? This I know because the Bible tells

me so. I wish I had a witness here when you don't feel like loving. You just love anyhow

because he first loves you if the Lord saved you and you know God loves you. If God has

been good to you and you don't mind testifying. If the Lord has made a way for you and you

don't care who's looking at you. If the Lord brought you a mighty long way and you don't

mind being a witness. Why don't you tell somebody I know what love got to do with it. I know

what love got to do with it. I know what love got to do with it. He died, didn't he die?

He died Sunday morning. He got up from the grave and because he loves me I can shout

this moment because he loves me. I can face tomorrow because he loves me. I can love my

enemies because he loves me. I can pray for those who despitefully use me because he loves

me. I can go to sleep tonight, put my head on the pillar and say now under him. Now under

him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all you can ask a fake a calling to

the power does that work in you? Why don't you grab somebody tell him he loves you. He

loves you. He loves you. He loves you. He loves you. He loves you. He loves you. I know

he's all I know.

He loves me so much. I'm trying to let y'all go but he went back to heaven to prepare a

place for us. He said if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive

you under myself that where I am value will be also in my father's house. In my father's

house. In my father's house. In my father's house. In my father's house. There are many

matches. Thank you Jesus. I know he's all right.