"Love for the Glory of God" 1 Corinthians 13:4-17 Sunday Morning Worship Service

1 Corinthians 13 verses 4 through 9 is what we will 4 through 7 is what we'll look at this morning.

1 Corinthians 13:4–9

1 Corinthians 13, verses 4 through 7.

1 Corinthians 13:4–7

The scripture says this in 1 Corinthians 13, verse 4 love is patient, love is kind.

1 Corinthians 13:4

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 it rejoices in the truth.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.

Obviously, love in our culture is a mess right now.

The Western world, really the entire world, lacks a real concept of what love is.

I think our society recognizes that love is a virtue, for sure.

Those in our world recognize that love is a virtue.

Hashtag love wins and whatnot, but it is absent any real concept of what authentic love is like.

Our culture in elevating love and in declaring that love wins and that love is supreme and that love is a good motive, and love is the motive and mandate of mankind reveals too much.

It reveals that most people, it seems, don't actually have a concept of what true love is.

It is considered a virtue for love to be unlimited in scope, but limited in demands.

You hear lines like, you should love me as I am, not as I should be, or not as you want me to be.

You hear the idea that if you love me, you'll accept me, and that is just about as foolish of a line as can be said.

Imagine even a little child saying that to their parents.

If you loved me, you wouldn't want me to change, you wouldn't want me to grow up, you wouldn't want me to mature, you wouldn't want me to learn right from wrong.

You know, we understand that real love is contrary to that desire.

You know, in our culture it seems, despite all of the protestations to the contrary, that love is accepting us, love is just receiving us, and love is ultimate.

We recognize that love in our culture is almost apathy.

When people say, you would love me if you accept me as I am, love me like I am right now, what they really mean is just leave me alone.

Love in our culture becomes almost synonymous with apathy, synonymous with ignoring me.

If you loved me, you would just let me be.

And that shows us how shallow our culture really is when it comes to love.

Love in our culture gets pitted against authority.

If you loved me, you would let me do what I want to do.

If you loved me, you would let me be who I want to be.

There's a concept of authority, and if authority goes against our desires, and the authority is by definition unloving.

That's the way our world views love.

Real love would never tell me what to do.

Real love would never tell me what to think.

Real love would never tell me what to believe.

In all honesty, I think our world is more concerned about who loves us than what love means.

And I'm not even talking about in the, you know, in the same-sex marriage movement, I'm talking about even in the hallmark romances and and whatnot, the idea that the person who loves you is ultimate.

Life becomes a quest, a romanticized quest to find the one that will love you or the one whom you will love.

It becomes obsessed really with the object of love rather than what love means.

There's a world of difference between saying we were made to love and to be loved, which is actually so selfish.

Just when you hear someone say that, we were made to love and to be loved.

Just think of how selfish that is.

That the object of your creation, the purpose of your creation is your own, is your own heart and how people feel towards you.

There's a world of difference between saying we were made to love and be loved, between that and saying we were made for God, who is love.

I think because of our romanticized and really shallow and insipid version of love, I as I said earlier, we've lost all concept of what real love is, what real romance even is.

As one sociologist put it in the Western world, quote, two people fall in love when they think they have found the best they can do on the open market given their own limitations.

I love that line so much, I'm gonna read it one more time.

Two people fall in love in the Western world when they think they have found the best they can do on the open market given their own limitations.

I'm looking at Jesus in the front row, engaged to be married.

That's not true of you, my friend.

What shallow and hollow view of love we often have.

When we accept, when we equate love with acceptance and even tolerance, or even looking the other way, when love becomes synonymous with ignoring me or accepting me as I am, you can see that we have lost sight of what true love is.

And by the way, in the Christian world, things are not much better.

I recently, just a couple months ago, listened to a sermon from a very well-known Christian preacher who talked about how love is not an emotion, love is not an action, love is a decision.

And he said the whole thing, you know, you might wake up one morning and look at your wife and you don't feel like loving her, and you don't do anything to show her that you you love her, but you still love her because you made a decision to love her.

And so that's why it's so dangerous to say that love is an emotion, or because one day you might not feel love, or it's so dangerous to say love is an action, because one day you might not do things that are action towards your wife, but you know you still love her because you made that commitment.

And I I mean I hurt my head from rolling my eyes so hard at that.

Could you imagine telling your wife that with a straight face?

And you know, I don't feel like loving you, and I'm not gonna do anything to show that I love you, but know that I do love you because I made a commitment to you a few years ago.

I mean, that's you would never see that in a Hallmark card at least.

For that reason, I think in the Christian world people are often very, very confused about love because they try to redefine it and lower the standard of it.

They say sometimes you don't feel like love, and so love can't be an emotion.

By the way, I I blame this on the prophet of our day, DC Talk.

I blame them.

They have a song about love that has these lyrics in it, which I am not making up.

You could Google them if you desire.

Not right now, don't Google them now, but they write this or sing this, pulling out my big black book, because when I need a word defined, that's where I yes, you guys know it.

Even at home, I'm sure you said it.

I flip to the L's quick, fast, and in a hurry.

I threw in my specs because I thought my vision was blurry.

You see, a big V stood beyond my word, and that's when it hit me that love is a verb.

Now, in point of fact, if you look up love in a dictionary, you will find it with both an N and a V next to it.

So the song doesn't even get the basic grammar of it correct, but I know that's not what they were were going for.

The chorus, by the way, uh, hey, I think it's time you learned.

I don't care what you say, I don't care what you heard.

The word love, love is a a verb.

Now you shouldn't take that too seriously.

I know we shouldn't get our theology from pop culture DC talk songs, but particularly this one, because this song also has the classic in it, thinking of a way to explain o, because you know I'm flowing like a bottle of Draeno.

So that in their lyric sheet spells love L-U-V.

But to the point, is love a verb?

Now, of course, love in a sense is a verb when you speak of it as an action, but grammatically this isn't ambiguous.

There are many verbs in the uh English language and in Greek as well that are derivatives of their noun form, and this is one of them.

Love is, if you're gonna pit the verb and the noun form against each other, love is primarily a noun.

The verb comes from it.

Love is a powerful emotion.

It is an affection.

It's an affection with the letter A.

It is something affectionate, it's something you feel, that is the overflow of your heart.

It is something that moves you, and it is uh the most powerful of all of the affections in that it has the power to affect the will.

When you love someone, you are motivated to act on their behalf.

Love changes the way you act towards someone.

That's what makes it so powerful.

This is why love can compel action.

It is a powerful emotion that does indeed affect the will.

1 John 4, verse 8 declares this: God is love.

1 John 4:8

If you're familiar with 1 John, you know that John declares that God is light, God is life, and God is also love.

Now you make a mistake to make an equal sign there and say, if God is love, that means God equals love, that means that love equals God.

It's non-reciprocal.

Just as if you were to say that uh, you know, that light bulb is light.

It doesn't mean that all light in the universe is that light bulb.

When you say that God is love, it doesn't mean that all love in the universe is God.

Of course not.

It means in the same sense that we looked at from Psalm 36, that God is the fountain of life, God is also the fountain of love.

Love comes from God.

God is the fountain of life.

All life comes from him, all light comes from him.

Psalm 36, verse 9.

Psalms 36:9

In his light do we see light.

You can't rightly see things apart from seeing them in the perspective is how they relate back to God.

You don't rightly have life or have life at all unless it has come from him.

And love is the same way.

God is the fountain of love.

Love comes from him, and it is for his glory because it has him as the object.

God is the object of true love.

We learn about love because God is the fountain of it.

Deuteronomy 7 says that is God speaking to Israel, where he says, I chose you.

I chose Israel, not because you were the most numerous nation in the earth.

Of course not.

God chose Israel when they weren't even a nation.

He tells Moses, repeat to the Israelites, that I chose you not because you were powerful, which is, of course, ironic.

Deuteronomy 7.

They're coming after 40 years of wilderness wanderings, where God killed all but two of them.

No, Moses says, God didn't choose you because you were more numerous or more powerful or more Ariudite or astute or that you had more wealth.

They were really refugees fleeing the Egyptian pursuit of them as the army was crushed in the Red Sea.

No, God says, I chose you because I loved you.

And then he says, I loved you because I chose you.

This is going back into the eternal decree of God.

That God set his affection on the Israelites because he loved them.

And why did he love them?

Because he chose them.

And why did he choose them?

Because he loved them.

They are so knitted together in the heart of God that as they're revealed to us, the point is very clear that God chose Israel because he loves them.

He loves them because he chose them, and they should have their lives changed as they now love God.

The doctrine of election flows from love.

That God chooses whom he will save because he loves them.

He set their heart upon them.

God didn't, the doctrine of election is not divine duck duck goose.

The doctrine of election flows from this idea that God sets his love on people.

He knows them by name.

This is John 3.16.

That God didn't send his son into the world or 3.17 to condemn the world, but he sent his son to the world to rescue them because all those who believe in him will be saved.

John 3.16, God so loved the world that he sent his son.

He didn't do the action and hope his emotion caught up with him.

God didn't send his son into the world to rescue the world and then decide to love those whom he rescued.

That totally confuses cause and effect.

God set his love on people and sent his son to go rescue them.

This is why understanding love is vitally important, because the idea of God's eternal love is behind all that he does.

His love motivates him to create.

Love is elevated in that sense.

Your love of God then dictates how you live out your life.

That is the greatest thing you can do.

It follows, by the way, that the greatest sin you can commit is to fail to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.

This is why we need to understand love.

If the greatest thing we can do is love the way God commands us to, and the greatest sin we can do is to fail to do that, it would follow that 1 Corinthians 13 should have a priority in our time in the Word of God.

And so, verses 1 through 3 of 1 Corinthians 13 describe how love is indeed a noun and not a verb, by the way, because you look at what you find in these first few verses.

I mean, let me just take one out of here.

Chapter 13, verse 3.

If I give away all I have and I deliver up my body to be burned, but I don't have love, I gain nothing.

I mean, this guy is seriously, he's not missing the action of love here.

He's got the V after it in his his little black book there.

This love, he's giving away everything he has, and he has given his body as a martyr.

But if he didn't have love, it doesn't mean anything.

Instead, biblical love is an affection that changes your life.

And you see it described, and this is what I want to spend our time on this morning in verses four down through seven.

Love is patient and kind.

Patient means it's it's it's long suffering, it can bear a heavy load.

Kind is a fruit of the spirit, it is a generous disposition towards others.

It does not envy, it doesn't want what you have, it's not jealous, in other words, it doesn't boast.

Love is not declaring how how good he is or advertising your your greatness.

That's unloving.

Love is not arrogant, it doesn't set itself up above you as if it were more than you.

Love is not rude.

In other words, it doesn't cut you off, it doesn't put itself in your place.

Love wouldn't do that.

Love wouldn't push you aside, so it would have the preeminence.

It does not insist on its own way.

Love doesn't make demands of you in that sense.

It doesn't demand that its way be the correct way.

It is not irritable.

Love isn't provoked to respond.

It's not resentful.

That word resentful, it literally means it's it's a longer expression in the Greek, that it keeps no record of wrongs.

It doesn't record wrongdoings.

Love doesn't rejoice at wrongdoing.

Of course, it doesn't record them and it doesn't celebrate them.

Rather, it rejoices in the truth.

It bears all things.

This is getting back to the it's patience.

It has an infinite load level.

It believes all things, it wants the best for you, believes what is is best about you.

It hopes all things, it's always hoping that there will be change made, and it endures all things, it never ceases, it never grows tired.

That's an overview of love.

But I want to drill down from it.

I want to shift perspectives a bit.

I know you've studied 1 Corinthians 13 many, many times.

For many people, it's the first Bible chapter they've they've memorized, especially one of the reasons I like the ESV, the way it's uh goes through this.

It's got an easy mnemonic capability to it.

It's very easy to memorize 1 Corinthians 13.

But I want to shift perspectives a little bit and kind of hope this doesn't become too familiar to you, by asking you to go through this list again with me now.

But instead of asking how love is, ask, is God these things?

I want you to shift to this passage and go through it again from the perspective of how does God love?

Does God love in these ways?

Is this a description of the love of God?

First, love is patient.

And so it's worth asking, is God patient?

Especially is he patient towards you?

And of course he is.

This is 2 Peter 3, verse 9.

2 Peter 3:9

Peter just declares, God is patient towards you.

There's not a lot of ambiguity with this one.

God is love, yes.

God is patient, also yes.

Love is kind, it says the second word on our list.

Is God kind?

And the answer there is also yes, God is kind.

Naomi declares this to Ruth back in the book of Ruth, where Naomi tells Ruth, Yahweh should be praised because he is kind.

And that's a what a great verse in the book of Ruth.

Yahweh should be praised.

Ruth, who is a Moabitus, is being instructed on why when she goes back to Israel, she ought to worship Israel's God.

And Naomi just says, because he's kind.

There you have it.

What about envy?

Love does not envy.

Does God envy or is God jealous?

And here's where our perspective is challenged a bit, isn't it?

Is God jealous?

And of course the answer to that is yes.

God is jealous.

Yahweh is, again, this is not ambiguous.

Exodus 20, verse 5.

Exodus 20:5

Yahweh is a jealous God.

Deuteronomy chapter 4, verse 24.

Deuteronomy 4:24

Yahweh is a consuming fire, a jealous God.

And that is not confined to the Old Testament God of jealousy, whereas the New Testament is the God of love.

I've heard people make that argument.

The Old Testament God is unloving because he's jealous.

The New Testament God is, of course, loving because he's not jealous, because Exodus 20, verse 5 is repeated at the end of Hebrews chapter 12, right there, smack dab in the middle of the New Testament.

Exodus 20:5 Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

Our God is a consuming fire, Paul writes.

He is indeed a jealous God.

And so our concept of God's love being like this is running into a problem right out the gate.

And the text says that God is, that love is does not envy.

Love is not jealous, but of course God is jealous.

Let's keep going.

Love does not boast.

Does God boast?

Well, yes, I would say.

Psalm 19, verse, Psalm 19 says, the heavens declare the glories of God.

The skies speak forth his handiwork.

Day after day pours forth speech.

Night after night declares knowledge.

There is no place that is hidden from the voice of God.

And in Psalm 19, what is the voice of God declaring?

God's own glories.

Joshua echoes this.

Joshua 24, 19, Yahweh is a jealous God.

He won't forgive your transgressions or your sins.

And then Joshua goes forward to explain how God is declaring his glory everywhere.

But Psalm 19 just makes the point.

How about the word arrogance?

Is God arrogance?

Now, I'm going to say no, he's not arrogant.

That one's better for a cause here.

1 Corinthians 4.19 describes arrogance as puffing up and causing divisions.

It makes people exalt themselves over others.

And so in the sense that it's got a negative connotation to it, God is not puffed up by his own knowledge because God possesses all knowledge.

So it's a word that really doesn't even apply to him.

Love is not rude.

It discreetly uses that word there where it describes acting in an immoral way.

And of course, God would never act in an immoral way.

But then our list runs into problems again when it says love does not insist on its own way.

Does God insist on his own way?

Well, yeah.

Yeah, he does.

Yeah, he does.

He, I mean, he gives us a matter of volition.

He gives us some freedoms in the world where we can choose things.

And so God isn't demanding about, you know, where you go to lunch today, for example.

Nevertheless, when you understand even a basic understanding of providence, you recognize that God is indeed sovereign over where you go to lunch today.

He's not insisting on it, I guess, but he's gonna roll up the heavens like a scroll, my friend, and destroy the earth and raise souls back to life.

And give them bodies so that he can send some to hell and others to glory for forever.

I mean, that would categorize this, insisting on your own way.

I mean, come on.

Love is not irritable.

Love is not irritable.

Deuteronomy 1, verse 34, Yahweh heard your words and became angry and swore an oath that they would not enter his wrath.

Deuteronomy 1:34

This is Moses going over, and that word there in Deuteronomy 1.34 is the same word in the Septuagint used in 1 Corinthians 13, directly ascribed to Yahweh.

Love is not resentful or it keeps no record of wrongs.

Does God keep a record of wrongs?

In some sense, absolutely.

Now praise God for his own children.

The answer is no.

Colossians 2, verse 4 describes a record of debt that stood against us that was subsequently nailed to the cross.

Colossians 2:4

Nevertheless, the whole image there is that God has a record of the deeds you have done wrong.

He has just nailed it to the cross of Christ, and you bear it no more.

But the point is, I won't belabor this any longer, the point is we have a problem.

When we define love in a minimalistic sense, and we go to 1 Corinthians 13 and said, God should love like this, we find a God who is unloving by his own revelation of love in 1 Corinthians 13.

And so you have to back up a bit and ask yourself a bigger question about love.

1 Corinthians 13 gives you a description of love, describes it as a powerful affection, of course.

It's not limited to actions because you can have all the actions of love without the affections.

But is there something we're missing here?

And I would say, yes, we are missing something here.

That the idea of love is really an affection you have towards somebody that wants what is best for that other person.

That's the phrase I've left off intentionally this morning.

You need the rest of that phrase.

Love is an affection towards someone, a powerful affection that transforms your actions for the good of the other person, for what is best for the other person.

This is why a parent has no problem telling their child, I love you, and that's why I want you to grow up.

I love you, and that's why I want you to change.

I love you, and that's why you need to learn to stop whining.

You need to learn to stop being greedy.

You need to learn to stop being demanding.

Because I know people that are like that when they grow up, and I don't want you to become one of them.

It's a very typical conversation in some households.

I'm not gonna say whose.

Love for children wants them to mature, wants them to change.

Now why?

Why?

Because you want what is best for them.

And you know that a life of greediness and a life that is demanding and a life that feels entitled and a life that is is rude and boastful and arrogant is not what is best for that child.

And you can extrapolate this out to all kinds.

This is the golden rule.

You know, do unto others, so to speak, as you would have them do unto you.

Love what's one is best.

And I just love the way Jesus gives that expression because love wants what is best for the other person, and the Lord assumes that you are always going to be acting in your own best self-interest.

There's no shortage of that to go around.

Love keeps no record of wrongs.

When you want what is best for the other person, you understand that lording things over them is not what is best for the other person.

So let's ask ourselves this question What is best for the other person?

And I'm not going to give you any more parameters than that.

Just what is best for another person?

Is there some answer that fits in that blank, no matter who you're talking about, no matter what situation you're in?

It's a husband thinking about his wife, a wife thinking about her husband, parents thinking about their kids, a person thinking about their neighbor, uh somebody thinking about their elderly neighbor, somebody thinking about the homeless person on the street, somebody thinking about their neighbor that antagonizes them, your coworker at work who you you're kind of friends with, your boss who you don't get along with.

I mean, is there something you can fit in that blank that works in all of those situations?

Love wants what is best for the other person, and what is best for that person is blank, and it is utilitary, and it works in all circumstances.

And the answer is, of course, yes.

The knowledge of the Lord.

Love wants what is best for the other person, and in all circumstances, for that person to be in God's will is what is best for them.

That's the answer, that's the only answer that I can think of that works.

That God's will being done in your life.

You could perhaps even get a little bit more specific than just generically God or generically God's will.

But how about this?

What is best for the other person is that they love the Lord's will.

That they love God and receive his will as he sends it.

That's what is best for the other person.

You can you can get pretty specific, I think.

What is best for every person in the world is that they would know the fear of the Lord, that they would embrace the fear of the Lord, and that they would love the Lord because of it and receive his will for their life.

That's what is best for the other person in every time of life, every season of life, every stage of life.

It doesn't matter the age or the mental capacity, what is best for every human being in the world is that they would know and love the Lord.

And so love becomes very circular very quickly, doesn't it?

That what is best for that person, if I love this person, I want what's best for them, and my love for them would make what is best for them their love for the Lord.

Now, if you're following me, and I grant this is a touch philosophical more than perhaps you might be used to in a sermon here, but if you're following me, you're going to see that the love of God is necessarily and categorically different than our love, because the object, the perspective of it is different.

God loves us in a way that makes much of God.

If God loves you, the most loving thing he can do for you is cause you to love him.

Because if the best thing for you is that you would grow in your knowledge and your love of the Lord, then God needs to love you in a way.

If he really does love you, and God really is what is best for you, then of course God has to love you in a way that causes you to grow in your love for him.

Now, if you really love someone, it's going to look different because if you really love someone, you have to understand you are not what is best for that other person.

You're not what is best for that other person.

And so, Jesus, I'm gonna keep picking on you because you're in the front row and I can see you.

About to get married.

You need to love Dawn in a way that does not make you the center of her world because you're not what is best for her.

You need to love her in such a way that makes God the center of her world because he is what is best for her.

And that is true in every marriage, that is true in every parenting relationship, that is true in every human relationship.

That our love is just going to be categorically different than God's is because the object is different.

And so that's why, I mean, I just want you to see how insane it would be to love someone contrary to 1 Corinthians 13.

If you were to look at your wife, of course you're gonna be patient with her, of course you're gonna be kind with her.

How dare you be jealous as if you were what was best for her over the Lord?

If she has affections for the Lord and you are upset that she has a love for the Lord instead of for you?

Or that you would boast.

How can you boast to your spouse or to your kids or to anyone about anything in light of the power of God?

I mean, is there anything that Paul says it this way to the Corinthians, is there anything you have that you haven't been given?

What are you gonna brag about?

Look how smart I am.

Who made you smart?

Look how clever I am.

Who made you clever?

Look how handsome I am.

Who made you handsome?

Look how much money I have.

Who gave you that?

Who gave you that?

Everything we have comes from the Lord.

You couldn't boast.

How could you be arrogant?

As if it's so wrong to offend you.

When God, any wrong done to you is so shallow compared to every wrong done against the Lord.

So you can't act offended because God is offended more than you, and God can offend for himself.

Love doesn't insist on its own way because how dare you insist on your own way?

Who do who exactly do you think you are?

My way or the highway guy?

I mean, come on.

Where did your way come from?

Your heart?

What made your heart good?

What made your heart the arbiter of what is true and right in the world?

Nobody.

So you can't insist on your own way.

Love keeps no record of wrongs.

How shameful would it be for a husband to keep a record of every time his wife wronged him?

You know, your wife says something unkind to you.

Going in the book, drotting it down.

A husband says something unkind to his wife, or you know, forgets to do something he was supposed to do, and the wife records it, knowing that it'll come out one day, you know.

Just so you know, honey, this is the sixth time this year that you forgot to get what I asked you to get.

I have the dates if you want them.

That's unloving.

That's unloving.

Because let's just deal with a practical level.

You're gonna record, you're gonna keep a record, and I know I'm a little bit hyperbole here, you probably don't actually have a journal.

Although there was one couple that I did know that the guy had an Excel spreadsheet.

And I would be stunned if he's listening to this live stream, but had an exc a literal Excel spreadsheet of the excuses that he that he'd been given and the times that his wife had failed him.

And so he could sort them by date, by time, by they were color-coded, it was nuts.

That would be arrogant.

That would be arrogant.

But let's just play this out.

Let's pretend you don't have an actual Excel spreadsheet, but you've got a list going on in your minds of how many times your wife has wronged you.

Do you think that your list would be longer than her list?

Or do you think that it would probably compete?

This is why it's so arrogant to do this.

To actually track the times your spouse is wronging you is so arrogant because it assumes that you are in the right.

It assumes that you are what is best for the other person.

This is just gonna be incredibly unloving.

I think of, you know, in our legal system, we have the concept of case law that if a judge ruled one way, you know, that's gotta be binding in, you know, his circuit or in his, you know, uh area, his region, whatever the, I'm forgetting the federal term, but you know, it's binding in that area and it goes all the way up.

Imagine trying to live a life like that in marriage.

Where, you know what?

We're gonna do this this way, because six years ago I asked you this question, and you said this was the answer six years ago, so it's gonna be the answer today, so you learn how wrong you were six years ago.

This is not loving.

It is arrogant and rude and selfish and boasting and contrary to love.

Now, the real reason is contrary to love, and I want you to get this.

The real reason that's contrary to love is because who does that put in the center of your spouse's universe?

You.

You become the son, and you expect her to revolve around you.

You become the arbiter of what is right and wrong.

It's unloving because you are not in your rightful place.

It's unloving because it's practically atheistic.

It denies that God should be the one that has captured our hearts, it denies that our lives should orbit around him.

It denies that his glory is primary, not ours.

And now let's go back to our list for the third time this morning and ask, what would God's love be like if it weren't these things?

Now, of course, we covered God is God is patient and love is patient, God is kind, and love is kind.

Love does not envy.

Now, if God really is what is best for the human heart, do you see why it would be unloving for him to be anything other than a jealous God?

It would be unloving for him to be anything other than a jealous God.

If God really is what is best for the human heart, for God to kind of throw up his hands and say, hey, there's a pantheon of deities you choose, I'm not gonna, you know, make a big deal about it.

That would be very unloving towards us.

If God didn't reveal his glories to the world.

You see the atheistic mind, it's such a contradiction here when they ask about, you know, what about people who haven't heard the gospel?

And then you can take them to Romans 1, or you can take them to Psalm 19 and say, the heavens declare the glory of God, his glory is manifest everywhere, so that all people at all times are without excuse, and yet they suppress the truth and unrighteousness, and but God is continually revealing his glory everywhere.

And the atheistic objection flips and says, How arrogant of God.

What kind of arrogant God would demand that everybody worship him and reveal his glories to the world?

You can't argue it both ways.

God reveals his glories to the world because he is loving.

He reveals his glories to the world because he is the one who is best for every human heart.

So of course he must be jealous.

Of course he must boast.

God would be very unloving if he were morally impure, like the word rude.

The word rude in English is kind of the wrong word there, because it the word rude implies like, you know, you cut in line at Costco, you know.

You didn't wear your ma your mask in Costco when it was required.

How rude, you know.

It's it's such a minimalistic term.

That's not what the word means in the in Greek here.

The word in Greek here means an actual moral impurity, and it's usually associated with sexual immorality.

And of course, God would not be God if he had any shadow of sin in him at all.

So, of course, that's true.

But this one, love does not insist in his own way.

Do you see how unloving it would be for God to not be sovereign over the world?

How unloving it would be for God to just let all the just on a practical level, to use the language of Colossians, that Christ holds all things together.

The law of entropy declares that all things fall apart.

How do we have a universe that is livable?

If one virus can bring us to our knees, imagine how unkind it would be to God if he just let the universe fall apart.

But through providence and sovereignty, he ordains all things for his glory and our our good.

That's because he's a loving God.

So of course he will assist us in his own way.

Of course he will keep a record of wrongs.

It would be so arrogant for a husband or wife to do that.

It would be unloving for God to not do that.

If God really were loving, he would be jealous over us.

If God really were loving, he would call us to love him.

If God really were to be loving, it really would be a loving God.

He would declare his glories to the universe, call us to come to him, give us his word so that we could know him, give us his son so we could see his love incarnate.

He would do all of those things if he really were a loving God.

And we would respond by repenting of our arrogance, repenting of our pride, trying to kill it, spending our life trying to slay our unloving hearts and trying to look more and more like God's love.

If God really loved us, he would contend with us, he would convict us of our sin.

He would chastise us, he would pull and prod and provoke us to follow him.

And of course, he does all of those things.

If God really did love us, he would want what is best for us and he would act in a way that backs it up.

And this goes back even further, of course.

Why did God create the world?

We looked at this last week in Psalm 36, but why did God create the world?

So that he could display his glories to his creation.

It is no sign of a fountain's weakness that is prone to overflow its banks.

God and his benevolence between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, they have a mutual love and a mutual indwelling and a mutual community and joy and fellowship and happiness that explodes into creation.

We were made to be recipients of God's love, recipients of that joy and community and fellowship.

God is philanthropic by nature.

He desires to give the good things he possesses away to us.

We were made to be recipients of his love.

He designed the universe to share, and particularly, he designed the universe to share in his love.

He creates the bedrock of civilization as the family as a picture of his love.

Parenting, he gives us, to display his glory through the way parents care for children.

The way husbands and wives interacting.

And so it follows then that if you believe, 1 Corinthians 13, from both perspectives, if you believe that it is wrong for you to love your wife in an arrogant and a proud and a boastful way that keeps a record of wrongs and insisting in her own way, and wives, if you believe this wrong for you to be rude and arrogant and unkind and unpatient towards your husbands, because of the nature of love, and you believe that God should be patient and kind towards you and should insist on his own way and should reveal his glories to the world, if you believe all that, that should have a powerful effect on the way you love each other.

A husband would want to lead his wife in such a way that she grows in her love for the Lord.

A husband would want to be the head of his household in a way that causes those who are in his household to grow in the love for the Lord more than in their love for him.

When a father makes himself the son in the household and causes everybody to revolve around him, it will be an out-of-whack household because he doesn't have a gravitational pull strong enough to pull that off.

He will become rude and boastful and arrogant.

When a father leads his household in such a way that is continually directing people to grow in their love for the Lord, they will grow in their love for the Lord and they will grow in their love for their husband or their dad as a side effect of that.

This is the marvelous way God has made the family.

It's so easy to see in children.

Parents that make themselves the center of the child's world will become frustrated and embittered towards their children.

They will become the nagging parents because their kids are become symbols of a the parent sees himself and the kids or herself and the kids, and they demand perfection of the kids because they view the kids as a reflection of themselves, right?

I'm sure you've encountered families that are like this.

The parents become perfectionistic towards the kids because when they other people will see the kids, and in the kids you're seeing the parents, and so we want you to put on a show so people think highly of me.

That parent has put himself in the middle of the solar system there.

And that parent demands too much of the children.

It becomes, as the children grow grow up and grow older, it becomes the children are trying to make up for all the parents' own failures to mask that.

And it just becomes a totally dysfunctional household where the kids rebel and the parents are rude, and because the parents are wanting too much from the children because the parents think that they are in the center of the world.

But notice that in a godly family, a husband who raises his kids and a wife who raises her kids to love the Lord are showing discipline towards the kids, of course, when they sin, and are showing kindness and forgiveness to the kids, of course.

They bear the rod to drive folly from the child of the heart, and so the heart uh from the heart of the child, and so the child knows to fear the Lord and that sin produces pain and consequences, but repentance produces forgiveness, and there's a real love there, and the love is focused on the Lord.

No, what happens is those kids grow up.

They're learning to love the Lord more and more, and a byproduct of that is they will learn to love their parents.

Often in Christian families, you can't tell how much a child is being obedient because he loves his parents and how much he's being obedient because he loves the Lord.

You can't discern that, can you?

I mean, I can't discern it in my kids.

I don't think anyone can discern it.

Because those two motives get so interwoven together that you can't tell the difference.

This is I think of little kids, you know, a parent comes and says, you know, with a let's say an eight-year-old and says, Would you baptize my eight-year-old?

And I usually say no.

I'd like to see them grow up more and you know become a teenager and see how much of their love and their obedience is an overflow of their love for the Lord versus their love for you.

And oftentimes the parents will say, No, no, they're doing this because they love God, not because they love me.

How can anyone tell?

I doubt the child could tell.

And that's a blessing that God made the human family that way.

That this these little children are growing up and they see the parents love the Lord, the children want to love the Lord, as the children love the Lord more, they love their parents more, and as one grows, the other grows.

The same is true in marriage.

As the husband loves the Lord more, he's going to love his wife more because she's a gift from the Lord.

As a wife loves the Lord more, she is going to love her husband more because the Lord has brought him into their family.

And the love grows together, but only when it's rightly ordered.

As soon as one person puts themselves in the middle of this, as soon as one person says everything needs to revolve around me, just chaos ensues because that is contrary to the love of God.

The husband leaves his wife leads his wife in a way that causes his own heart to grow in the love for the Lord, and her heart to grow in the love for the Lord will find that her love for each other grows.

So listen carefully.

You love your kids the most when you make much of God before them.

You love your kids the least when you make much of them before them.

This is behind the concept of child dedication in the Old Testament, which is totally anathema in today's world.

You know, today's world would like to excise those parts from the Old Testament because it just seems obscene to them that somebody would dedicate a child to the Lord, give a child.

You know, you see Hannah dropping off Samuel in the temple.

It just seems so contrary to us.

But understand what's meant by that in the Old Testament.

A parent is dedicating a child to the Lord by saying, I love this child the most when I love the Lord more than them.

Love for child and love for God aren't opposites.

They're ordered.

They're not in conflict, they work together.

That's the way God created the world.

Again, when this is disordered, you see a family with the rules-driven parents who oppresses the children, worshiping their own self-image in the children, striving to demonstrate to the whole universe that the parents are good and the family is good because they have their act together and it produces disorder in the family every time.

And the parent who's like that, the mom that is driving their child her children like that, or the father who is perfectionistic like that, if you ask them, they would say they were doing it because they love their children, wouldn't they?

And say I'm doing this because I love you.

But you recognize that it's actually idolatry.

It's their seeing their own image in their children and loving themselves.

When a person loves the Lord, they will parent driving the children towards the Lord.

On a positive side, when we teach our children discipline, when you spank your children, you're teaching them that there's no difference between law and love.

The law is an expression of love.

And in a healthy Christian household, those two go together and the children learn to fear the Lord, and they learn about forgiveness and grace and the act of restoration that is such a precious picture of the gospel.

I hope in your house the penalty for lying to you is more severe than the penalty for making you look bad in public.

The lesson is that truth is more precious than your appearance.

The penalty for lying, the consequence for lying in your household is a parent should be more severe than stealing your sister's toy.

The lesson from that is that truth is more precious than toys.

God is more precious than toys, God is more precious than parents.

That's when you're loving your children like God calls you to love them.

The first commandment says, Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

How do you do this?

By imitating Christ, who is imitating God.

We're to love others as Christ loved us.

And if you think about this from God's perspective, God does not send his son to the world to make much of the world.

He loves the world.

He sends his son to the world to make much of his own love.

God loves us in this way.

Love is not a decision that you make, it's not an action that you do.

Love is primarily an emotion, an affection you have that is driven by your knowledge of the truth.

You learn about God, it affects how you feel about him in your area of love.

It works its way out to your hands.

It's head, heart's hands.

Your knowledge of him produces a transformed life, which produces an obedient life.

God's love is not a faucet that can be turned on and off.

God does not wake up one morning and not feel like loving you.

You may wake up one morning and not feel like loving him, and that is called sin, and you are to repent of it, not redefine love.

And the same thing is true in marriage, by the way.

You wake up one morning and you don't feel like loving your wife, you don't redefine love so that you qualify at that moment.

No, you say that's sin.

I repent and I ask the Lord to cause me to grow in my love.

So there's a triage in love, of course.

You love the Lord first.

You love your family second, you love your neighbors, your enemies, third and fourth.

That's the triage in scripture.

Because all of that has to be ordered, because God is the only son that can hold that solar system together.

Everything revolves around him.

True love, the most effective portrait of love is the love that God possesses for Jesus Christ, the Father possesses for his son.

Because that is the nature that gets incarnate in Jesus Christ and ultimately gets shared with us.

That kind of love cannot be called into existence by our actions, but our actions flow from our knowledge of God and the love of God that has been shed abroad in our heart.

This is why the romanticized hallmark or even Shakespeare version of love is a shallow lie.

Shakespeare can have all the right language and the right emotion, but he has the wrong object.

Love can only be rightly understood as much as it revolves around God.

This is why Ephesians 2, verse 4 and 5 is so critical.

Ephesians 2:4

God, rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive in Christ.

That kind of love seen in the gospel is not lower than Shakespeare's, it's higher than Shakespeare's.

Because it recognizes the love of God seen in Christ is what causes us to love as well.

So when we look at Jesus, then we see the ultimate picture of God's love.

We see the patience of Jesus.

And how patient was Jesus?

I mean, how many times did he put up with Peter, for example?

What patience?

Love is kind.

How kind was our Lord towards his disciples, towards the weak, towards blind Bartimaeus.

Jesus didn't boast of his power.

You know, when he walked on the water, it was night and in the storm.

In fact, he did he fed the multitude in front of the crowd, and they kept going because they wanted to see more displays of his power, and he sent them away.

He becomes our Savior by bearing our sin, by giving his life for us, and by displaying his love.

And we then live in light of love.

This is why the Jesus says, you'll know, the world will know the love of God when they see the love of God, the Father for the Son, the love of the Son for the church, and the love that we have for each other.

That's the triage, that's the flow.

God first, family second, neighbors, and it goes backwards, all the way back up to the Lord.

So you move from the gifts up to the giver, the giver down to the gifts.

You don't love the Lord for his gifts, you love the Lord for who he is, as seen in his gifts.

And this takes us back to 1 Corinthians.

This is why love is not out of place in 1 Corinthians.

If you're familiar with the book, Paul sent all of chapter 12 describing spiritual gifts.

Don't love the Lord for spiritual gifts, though.

The spiritual gifts are rightly used when they are ordered towards the church that loves the Lord.

Love is what gives the gifts power.

Love is what gives the gifts the ability to actually affect the church and to grow in maturity.

And maturity is defined as growing in the love for the Lord.

There's no such thing as a mature person who doesn't love the Lord.

There's no such thing as a mature Christian that doesn't love the Lord.

Because the love of the Lord is the center of all knowledge, the center for all obedience, the center of all maturity.

Revelation 14, verse 11 Worthy are you, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and they were created.

Revelation 14:11

Romans 11 36, from him and through him and to him are all things, including and especially love.

It is from him, it is for him, and it is to him.

And you only rightly understand love when it is related back to him.

And first John 4 7, dear friends, let us love one another.

Because John says love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

Lord, we're thankful that you have given us your love that has come to us through Jesus Christ.

And I pray for anyone who is listening to this today that has not loved you in return.

This is the most basic act of conversion.

For the human heart to set its love upon you.

I pray for parents that have wrongly loved themselves instead of their children.

I pray for husbands that have wrongly loved themselves rather than the Lord.

I pray for wives that have wrongly loved themselves rather than Jesus Christ.

I pray that you would reorder those family relationships with your you, the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, the center of their lives and hearts and affections.

I pray for any non-believers that are listening to this, I pray that today they would confess their sin.

They would confess the ways that they have been rude and immoral and arrogant and boasting and prideful and have kept records of wrongs.

They would confess those, that we would see our inadequacy, our sinfulness.

We would confess that is wrong, and instead ask you to forgive us of our sins and ask you to cause our hearts to love you instead of ourselves.

I pray that this church, Emmanuel Bible Church, should be a church known by the love of God, being at the center of all we do, think, and say.

We pray that your love would be preeminent this week as we go into the world.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thank you for watching Emmanuel Bible Church today.

You know, today's sermon was filmed in front of an empty worship center because of the coronavirus lockdown.

But it's my prayer that if you live in the DC area, I'll be able to meet you when the church doors open again.

In the meantime, if you want more information about Emmanuel Bible Church, you can find us at iBC.church.

Or if you want more information about the Master Seminary in their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tnms.edu.

In the meantime, I hope today's ministry enables you to seek God through Jesus Christ, to serve Him with gladness, and to share Him with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.