Love is Long-Suffering: Love is Kind (1 Corinthians Sermon 47)

Pastor Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on 1 Corinthians 13:4. The main subject of the sermon is what it means for love to be long-suffering and kind.

- SERMON TRANSCRIPT -

So I would like to ask that you turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 13. Andy already read the text for us and we're gonna continue our journey through this incredible chapter we've already seen. As Paul says at the end of Chapter 12, introducing chapter 13, that love is the most excellent way, love really is the summation of everything that God wants to do in the soul of a Christian, and heart of a Christian, it's the most excellent virtue. We've also seen last week that even the most excellent gifts and abilities and ministries are worthless if they're not done in love, and Paul uses the most extreme language, the tongue of men and of angels, of having the gift of prophecy and fathoming all mysteries and being able to have all knowledge, but having not love, or somebody who gives of himself even to the point of being burned or gives everything he owns to the poor, if it's not done in love, it's worthless, it's nothing, and so we saw that last week.

Now, these strong assertions were necessary, because the Corinthian church for all of their giftedness, for all of their ability, it seems were not a very loving people. They were prideful, and they were bickering and faction-ridden and even some were taking others to court. But honestly, the real issue here as we come to 1 Corinthians 13 is not the ancient Corinthian church. Those people all died a little less than two millennia ago, and that local church long, long ago, the lamp stand was removed from that church, and so that the local church ended. What we have instead are the timeless words that the Holy Spirit moved the apostle Paul to write that stand over every generation of Christians, has stood over 20 centuries of Christians to teach us what love is. So the real issue is not what were the Corinthians like, but what are we like? And frankly, for each of us individually, as we come to it, it's what am I like? What am I like? That's the point of all the sermons that I plan to preach and that I'm going to preach today in 1 Corinthians 13.

And for you as those that are listening, the point will not be how good is the sermon, or how excellent are my illustrations or how tight is my logic or my eloquence or my delivery, how excellent is all of that, or how clear or any of that. None of that is the issue, the real issue is, what is the Holy Spirit saying to me personally? About my own heart and my own life? What is going on in my life? What is going on in my heart? The Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write these words so that we could look into the perfect mirror of this chapter and learn what love really is. So honestly, the kind of love described in this chapter is really supernatural, it's beyond anything that we can do consistently day after day, minute after minute, now I wanna say there's nothing particularly miraculous about any detail of it, it's not like Paul is saying, love is patient, love walks on water, love flies like a peregrine falcon, love cooks dinner for its family every night, a mixture of common place things and then supernatural things we could never do. It's not like that at all.

Actually, every bit of this chapter is both natural and supernatural. It is natural in that we can do any of it some time, we can do it in short stretches, but we can't seem to carry it off day after day, minute after minute for the whole of our lives, and the reason for that is we've learned in Romans 7 is indwelling sin, sin living in me. As Paul talks about, the very thing that I hate, I do, but the thing I want to do, I do not do. And if that doesn't perfectly describe the problem that thoughtful Christian readers have as they read 1 Corinthians 13, I don't know what else does. We've got this problem of indwelling sin that makes us radically unloving people, so our only hope is the gospel of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, and the fruit of the Spirit is love, and all of these virtues flow from that.

Now, as I mentioned last week, I'm not feeling any compulsion to hurry through this chapter, you may say, Pastor, you're not even doing a full verse today, just “love is patient, love is kind.” We're not even getting through verse four, but I don't want to hurry because of the power of this chapter. And as I said last week, I'm gonna be leaning on Jonathan Edwards' excellent work on the 16 lectures he did on 1 Corinthians 13, which is grouped together in a book called Charity and Its Fruits and it's public domain. I commend it to you. And I'm leaning on him this morning as I look at the first two aspects, love is patient, love is kind.

Now, as I was driving in this morning, I was just thinking about this chapter, and thinking about love is patient, love is kind, and it occurred to me, I've been wrestling with 1 Corinthians 13 now for weeks, and it's been very difficult actually for me. It’s been somewhat painful, but there's also a certain delight, and I wanna commend that, and I'm gonna keep talking about this over the next number of weeks, because I think the Holy Spirit has given me a key to understanding what's going on with 1 Corinthians 13. And that is this dual phrase of “painful delight”, painful delight. It is painful. As I read, love is patient, love is kind to see how impatient and unkind I really am day after day, that's been painful, it is painful, but then the delight is threefold. First of all, that there is evidence through the Holy Spirit that I'm alive in Christ because it does bring me pain to not be loving, and I actually do see some evidence of supernatural love being worked in me by the Holy Spirit, so that's the first level of delight. 

The second level of delight is hope for the rest of my life. I believe that as I apply the lessons from 1 Corinthians 13, week after week, I will become a more loving person. It will improve my marriage, my parenting, my pastoring, everything in my life, so I have great hope that the rest of my life can be much more richly colored by love, and in this particular case, I can become a much more patient and a much kinder person as I study this through the power of the Holy Spirit. And then finally, ultimately, eternal hope, the delight of knowing that some day I will be perfected in love, I will be in Heaven perfectly loving now, I won't need long-suffering in heaven, I won't need patience in heaven. But I will be perfectly kind in heaven and all of the other positive attributes will be at work in my life, and so that's what I wanna commend to you. As we begin this journey, I'll mention this again, God willing, in future weeks. This painful delight.

So let's look this morning at these two aspects, love is patient, and then love is kind... Now, the word patient, the Greek word behind the word patient is well translated long-suffering, makrothumia, it means to suffer a long time. Long-suffering, now, we don't use the word long-suffering much, and so we generally just go with love is patient, but what it means is to patiently endure injuries of every kind. Alistair Begg put it this way, “Love has a long fuse.” A long fuse... not a short fuse, it takes a long time for a patient person, a loving person to blow up, to blow his stack. It specifically has to do with patience with other people, and even more specifically, patience with other sinful people. We won't need to be patient in heaven. No one will task our patience in heaven, not at all, but here on earth, we need it because people are sinful in our lives. Chrysostom said about this text and about the patience, a man who has been wronged and easily has it in his power to avenge himself and refuses to do it, so that's his take on long-suffering. Ultimately, of course, Jesus Christ is the best picture of this. As it says in 1 Peter 2:23, “When they hurled their insults at Him, He did not retaliate. When He suffered, He made no threats.” And so that's Jesus' level of patience. We'll talk more about this as well.

Now, Edwards in his lecture on this section of 1 Corinthians 13, talks about the various injuries that commonly happen to people in this world, and that's why we will need long-suffering, the myriad ways that we injure one another. That we hurt one another. My purpose here is not to give you an extensive catalog of all of those ways, but to give you or remind you of the flavor of what our life is like in this world. So for example, there are injuries in business dealings and financial dealings, injuries connected with money and business. People in this world are constantly defrauding one another in so many ways, people withhold payment when they should give it, or they renege on contractual agreements, or they do shoddy workmanship on a job. Money, we're told in the New Testament is a root of all kinds of evil, and it is a great mark of Christian maturity, of our sanctification, it's put on display when we care more about horizontally about other people's souls than about our money. But this idea of love is long-suffering can happen in reference to money and business, or injuries in reputation, this has to do with the damage we do to each other's reputation, people slander each other, people tear each other down with their words. They do character assassination. They spread gossip and poisonous innuendo. A lot of this happens these days on social media, such a venting place for people to do this kind of character assassination and pour poison into the souls of others concerning individuals. 

Then there are injuries to our bodies, physical injuries. It can happen ever since Cain killed his brother Abel. Jesus linked anger to murder, and so frequently an angry heart can lead to attacks, physical attacks that can happen. Attacks on your possessions, attacks on your body, even to the point of serious injury or even death. Or it could be injuries from authority figures, people have positions of power, in our lives or in society. It could be elected officials, government officials, could be police, those with that kind of authority, could be a boss, it could be a coach, it could be a teacher, professor, somebody with authority, and they have the ability to make your life miserable. They can lord it over you, they can abuse you physically or verbally, materially. Some governments enact laws against our Christian brothers and sisters that make it impossible for them to gather, to meet together without fear. They arrest pastors and drag them off, physical assaults from authority figures.

Then there are injuries that happen with neighbors, perhaps they like to play loud music or shoot firearms at odd hours. Our neighbors in Japan, I remember, had a habit of burning their garbage at a certain time every day, and the wind always seemed to blow toward us, and so it was interesting, it's just a unique smell, burning garbage, and then our clothes would smell like it, etcetera. Or perhaps in your neighborhood, it's a crotchety old man who yells, “Get off my lawn!” at your kids. I've actually felt that myself, I remember years ago, some of our neighbors took a diagonal journey across the street to go fishing in the lake, and I felt that welling up inside. It’s like, “Do you really wanna be the get-off-my-lawn neighbor? But that's the kind of thing that can happen in neighborhoods,. Maybe your neighbor has a dog that barks all night. We used to live near what I called the “metronome dog” that used to bark like.…well, I won't imitate it, but a very rhythmic barking that was annoying. Or maybe you live in an apartment complex and people cook with certain ingredients that make the entire building smell like that ingredient for the rest of the day.

Most especially we look at injuries from family members. We are in such close quarters with each other, and especially with this sheltering at home, we can be in each other's grill, in each other's space. And there are things that can happen, husband to wife, wife to husband, parent to child, child to parent, brothers, sisters, siblings, and we can annoy each other and irritate each other, and there can be injuries, we use that word, but just things that are annoying or bothersome, etcetera. And then move it out to extended family, aunts and uncles, cousins, things happen, and we have this historical memory of when this happened or that happened, and there can be injuries. 

So all of these are things that happen in life. And they require Christians to be long-suffering. They set you up in a situation where you need to bear patiently that issue, what does it mean then to be long-suffering? Well, it means to bear the injury meekly and humbly, and to not seek retaliation at all, to not seek revenge, there are so many things that we can do to get revenge, there's so many movies and books and different things out in popular culture, they're basically based on revenge, it's a very common plot development where at the beginning of the movie, some villain does something villainous, and at that point, it's almost like in the movie, all bets are off, that person is fair game for revenge, and it's just a whole story of revenge.

There are so many of these, there are vigilante stories where somebody will take justice, the matters of justice right into their own hands and they become the investigator, the jury, judge and executioner in that, and we actually can even celebrate it because of the evil done by the villain in the story, but to be long-suffering means to forgo any of that. To forgo any revenge or retaliation, to choose not to slander your neighbor back, get them back to subtly attack their character or use innuendo, to not get back at the coworker who backstabbed you and kept you from getting the promotion, to not get back at them, to be long-suffering means to forgo the right to treat your neighbor as they've treated you, or to repay a family member for the way that they've treated you, even if it's a small offense. They were irritable and rude with you, and therefore you're gonna be irritable and rude with them. That’s not long-suffering. Sometimes we can be passive aggressive and exact payback in that respect, so basically to not harbor in any respect, any spirit, bitter spirit of retaliation or revenge, not only do you not enact revenge in real life, you don't even fantasize about it. 

In your mind and heart, you don't cherish any thoughts or use any creativity or thinking about ways you could get your revenge, you drop the matter entirely, you forgive as the Lord has forgiven you, you treat the person as if the injury had never occurred, and you maintain a loving spirit toward that person. This is the fundamental aspect of love, you desire horizontally, that person's blessedness still, despite what's happened, actually, perhaps even more because of what's happened, you really yearn for them to know the forgiveness that only God can give and you really would love to spend eternity with that person in heaven, you have that eternal perspective. You don't lose the quietness and the tranquility of your own heart before God, their injury toward you hasn't done anything toward, vertically toward your being spirit-filled with God, and then also horizontally as well, and so you actually have a supernatural attitude, like Paul said earlier in the lawsuits passage, “So why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated than go to court?” So that's what long suffering looks like.

"You drop the matter entirely, you forgive as the Lord has forgiven you, you treat the person as if the injury had never occurred, and you maintain a loving spirit toward that person. This is the fundamental aspect of love," 

This is why it's called long-suffering, 'cause we bear the injury over a long time. We bear it, we carry that injury for a long time, I don't even need to remember and keep a record of wrongs we will get to that later, but the point is that we are willing to bear this and put up with it, not even just a small injury sometime, but sometimes even a very great one, one that's changed your whole life to be willing to bear that wrong for a long time. This takes supernatural endurance. So many situations in my pastoral ministry have come up where this has been what the circumstances call for. It might be an unregenerate spouse, and the regenerate, the Christian spouse, has to bear for a long time and pray for a long time, and love and cherish for a long time and put up with a lot of things. Or you could think about Christian parents of a wayward son or daughter that's living maybe an alternate lifestyle, and every occasion, every holiday, they bring their sin and all of its effects into the family and bring so much distress, and there's just so much that you have to be long-suffering for.

So how does our Christianity, how does the gospel set us up for being long-suffering? I think we should look vertically at the first great commandment, love for God, and then horizontally at the second great commandment, love for our neighbor, and the way that Jonathan Edwards sets it up. He says, We are equipped through our Christian faith to fulfill the law and to love God and that love for God enables us to be long-suffering, and then our love for horizontally for our neighbor enables us to be long-suffering, first love for God and for Christ enables us to be long-suffering because we want to imitate God, if we love him we wanna be like him. Fundamentally, as he said, “Be holy because I am holy”, you could just take that out and say, Be long-suffering, because I am long-suffering, we see the virtue of it, we see the beauty of it, that God actually is incredibly long- suffering. Think about when he made the promise to Abraham of the promised land, and he made the prophecy about what would happen, how the Jews would be in Egypt, and he said in the fourth generation turned out to be almost half a millennia later, your descendants will come back here, under Joshua, because the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure. For 500 years, God was long-suffering toward the wickedness of the Canaanites and all of their evil religion and their immorality. He bore it for 500 years. Or think about God's patience with the Jewish nation. We see all the catalog of idolatries and all their sins and in the ways they violated the Mosaic Law, and how even in the New Testament, when Christ came, most of them didn't believe. And how it says, powerfully in Romans 10:21, concerning Israel, God says, “All day long, I've held out My hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.” That story is one of God's incredible long-suffering toward Israel, and we wanna imitate that, we wanna be like God. 

Secondly, our love for God gives us gratitude to God and that gratitude for the way he's patient with us, he's been long-suffering with us, and the more you realize that the more you say, "How can I not be long-suffering toward others?" Has God not put up with much from you? Be honest. As you look in the Word that your conscience speaks, when you look back at your own life, even up to this very day, has God not been patient with you? Is He not patient every day? We have been stubborn, we have defied Him, we have resisted him, we have disobeyed him, we have sinned in many areas, but we've sinned in some areas again and again through habitual sin, and God has been so patient. And so just out of gratitude to God, we want to be long-suffering toward one another. Love for God also makes us extremely humble. It humbles us to know the grace of God, and it severs the tap root of that wicked pride that says, I don't deserve the injury you're giving me, I don't deserve to be treated like that.

"We have been stubborn, we have defied Him, we have resisted him, we have disobeyed him, we have sinned in many areas, but we've sinned in some areas again and again through habitual sin, and God has been so patient. And so just out of gratitude to God, we want to be long-suffering toward one another."

 But then when you realize the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, and we're supposed to play the role of that tax collector, that stood off at a distance and beat his breast and would not even look up to Heaven, but said, "Be merciful to me, oh God, a sinner." And Jesus said that man went home justified. Not the other one. We realize how could we be prideful toward God or toward any other person. And so it enables us to be long-suffering because it severs the tap root of that pride that says, "I don't deserve to be treated like you're treating me." Also, it gives us wisdom, we are able to see, love for God enables to see God's hand in the bad treatment we're getting. God actually wants us to go through some of that bad treatment, those afflictions, those persecutions, those oppositions, to help us grow in our sanctification. We're supposed to consider it pure joy whenever we face trials of many kinds. The Apostle Paul never forgot who he was before his conversion, he never forgot that he was the chief of sinners, that he didn't deserve to be called an apostle because he persecuted the church of God, he never forgot that. 

But he also realized that God was using these light and momentary afflictions to further the Gospel and to prepare him for glory that doesn't even, isn't worth comparing with the afflictions we go through, so we are able to see God's wisdom in bringing these injuries to us, we need them. And then finally, love for God gives us a perspective of where we're heading. We are going to heaven. We're gonna spend eternity in the new heaven, new earth, we're gonna spend eternity in the new Jerusalem. We are going to swim in an ocean of happiness. What is the injury you're going through compared to that? Is it not a particle, a dust on the scales of eternity? Doesn't our love for God give us an eternal perspective, enabling us to soar above the clouds of the injury, whatever it is, no matter how severe, to soar above it and see eternity and see beyond it? I love what it says in Hebrews 13:6, “So we say with confidence, ‘The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?’” So honestly, what can another human being do to you in reference to your eternal reward and your eternal inheritance in heaven? Nothing, there's nothing they can do. And so it just gives us that vertical love for God, enables us to be long-suffering. 

Also our horizontal love for our neighbor enables us to be long-suffering, too. We are able to see our neighbor in light of eternity, and if we are genuinely loving toward that neighbor, whether a Christian or non-Christian, just another human being, we genuinely want their blessedness, we genuinely want them to be eternally blessed, we would love to spend eternity with that person in Heaven. I remember I was witnessing on an airplane with a guy, I never met him before. And it says in 2 Corinthians, "As though God Himself were making His appeal through us, we implore you, be reconciled to God." And so I was sharing the gospel, actually got to the point of, to some degree, begging him to come to Christ, we had an hour-long conversation, and my heart was filled with one desire. I had one desire, and that is, I wanted to spend eternity with this total stranger in Heaven. Now that had to be the work of the Holy Spirit in my heart. I didn't know this guy at all.

And it wasn't weird. The guy said, "Why do you care so much?" I said, "Well, honestly, I'd like to spend eternity with you in heaven. We’re gonna land in about half an hour, probably I'll never see you again, but that's the truth." And so I think what happens is the Holy Spirit expands us horizontally to include other human beings created in the image of God and makes us want to see them blessed both in time and in eternity. 

That's what love does. Think about what Stephen did when they were stoning him to death, and he said, "Lord, do not charge them with this sin, do not hold this sin against them." Just like Jesus, when he said, he said, "Father, forgive them, they don't know what they're doing." And so as Jesus's heart expanded out, it included the thief on the cross and won him over, so that the thief said, "Remember me when you come in your kingdom." "Today, you'll be with me in paradise." So also Stephen's heart moved out and he couldn't know it, but his life, his arguments from scripture and his demeanor and his prayer, I believe were instrumental in winning Saul of Tarsus to faith in Christ. 

And so it just goes out horizontally. Lord, don't hold this sin against them. Oh God, would you forgive them? God would you love them? So Christian, long-suffering is the mark of a great work of grace in the human soul toward neighbor. It is the consummation of the second great commandment, to be able to turn the other cheek, humbly, to be able to accept wrongs, to be willing to be persecuted. Even some of our brothers and sisters, even savagely persecuted. We think about in East Africa, where roving bands of fanatical Muslims have hunted down our Christian brothers and sisters and killed them with machetes, etcetera, It’s remarkable how much grace and love has been shown through those Christians to win some of those Muslims to faith in Christ. This goes on all over the world, but then think of the rewards that you have. If you're able to love your persecutor, you're able to bless those who bless you. And Jesus said, "If you only love those who love you, what reward will you get? But if you're able to love your persecuting enemy, great is your reward in heaven." Jesus said in Matthew 5, so let me just stop at this issue of long-suffering and just apply it immediately, what you need to do as you listen to this is evaluate your own heart and life. Are you long-suffering? Are you patient when wronged or do you tend to have a short fuse, and you tend to fly off the handle? And I think all of us I know will come up short of where we'd like to be. Some of us come up very short, you know that this is a big problem in your life, you fly off the handle regularly, you have a very short fuse, this is a part of your.…but just ask God to show you the dimensions of this sin of being so radically impatient when wronged and ask Him to work this in you by His grace, we can take these words and bring them up to God in prayer and see Him work in us. 

"So Christian, long-suffering is the mark of a great work of grace in the human soul toward neighbor. It is the consummation of the second great commandment, to be able to turn the other cheek, humbly, to be able to accept wrongs, to be willing to be persecuted."

So the second part is kind. Love is patient, love is kind. What does it mean to be kind? So I think long-suffering, the way I look at it is in a sports or way like football, where long-suffering is playing defense. And then being kind or kindness is putting points on the board. It's offense, so we're gonna play defense when wronged, when attacked, and then we're gonna move out in kindness and goodness and love. The word is linked to goodness, to freely doing good for other people. It may have to do with goodness done to the bodies of other people, kindness may be shown physically to alleviate pain and suffering or to bless physically in some way, or it may have to do spiritually. It may have to do with evangelism. Sharing the gospel is an act of kindness. Giving a word of biblical encouragement is an act of kindness. So it's moving out doing good works to bless other people, that's what kindness really is. 

Think about the Good Samaritan, the parable of the Good Samaritan, where this man is beaten up on the road to Jericho and the priest and Levite just ignore him and walk by, but the Good Samaritan goes over and shows him kindness. He cares for his wounds, he picks him up, he carries him on his donkey to a hotel or an inn where the innkeeper can care for him, he pays for it, and whatever is needed, he does just as Jesus said to the sheep and not to the goats. “I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger, and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you came and visited me, I was in prison, you looked after me.” All of these are acts of kindness, and it's done from a demeanor of delight, of gentle delight, when you think of kindness, you think of a demeanor as well as the action, it's not just what is done, but how it's done, and it's done... I think I picture gentleness, tenderness and a certain measure of delight. God loves a cheerful giver, not somebody who gives reluctantly or under compulsion, person's happy to do this good deed for you, that's with kindness. You get a sense that the other person is enjoying doing this for you, they really delight in doing this for you, there's a certain level of that. 

Now, biblically there are so many examples of this. My mind goes to Joseph. After Jacob died, and Joseph's brothers had done him so wrong, some of them wanted to kill him. Threw him in a pit. Sold him as a slave. It was about as bad as it can get. But by this point, Joseph had developed a supernatural perspective on what God was doing in all of this. Now, after Jacob died, his brothers were terrified of his Egyptian power base, of the incredible power that Joseph had, he could have killed them. And they knew it. And so in Genesis 50:18-21, it says, "His brothers came and threw themselves down before Him, ‘We are your slaves,’ they said. But Joseph said to them, ‘Don't be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me. You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.’” Or, intended for good, “‘to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.’l Now, here's the key, listen to this. "So then, don't be afraid, I will provide for you and for your children. And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them.” That right there is why I'm sharing this text. He had the supernatural perspective of what God was doing to get just so beyond what his brothers had done to him. So he was patient, long-suffering, but then he went out in kindness. And first and foremost, he not only did not retaliate, he physically cared for them. He blessed them, set them up at houses, made sure they had enough to eat all that, but it wasn't just that, it was how he did it, he reassured them and spoke kindly to them, he actually had a heart, a genuine heart of affection for them. It's incredible. So you could just take that and say, "Oh God, make me that kind of a person.” 

"He had the supernatural perspective of what God was doing to get just so beyond what his brothers had done to him. So he was patient, long-suffering, but then he went out in kindness. And first and foremost, he not only did not retaliate, he physically cared for them. "

Or again, take the story of Boaz in the way that he treated Ruth. Remember Ruth was a Moabitess, she was a widow, and she came back with her mother-in-law to Israel, foreign land for her, and she goes out to glean, that's what poor people did, if they wanted some food. They'd go out into the fields and get some extra grain that was laying around in the ground. She could have gone anywhere, but she ends up at Boaz's field, and this is what happened. Second chapter, Ruth 2:8-13 says, "So Boaz said to Ruth, 'My daughter, listen to me, don't go and glean in another field and don't go away from here. Stay here with my servant girls. Watch the field where the men are harvesting, and follow along after the girls. I've told the men not to touch you, and whenever you're thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men have filled'." Wow. “At this, she bowed down with her face to the ground, She exclaimed, ‘Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you even notice me, a foreigner?’” 

Now here comes the kindness. Boaz replied, "I have been told all about what you've done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband, how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with the people you did not know before. May the Lord repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge." So not only does he provide for her, makes sure she has enough to eat, and at the end of this encounter, he gives her a bunch of grain to take back to her mother-in-law, he lavishes goodness on her. But it's how he does it, it's that he elevates her, speaks respectfully to her, find something he can encourage in her. She's blown away. And then she says in verse 13, "May I continue to find favor in your eyes, my lord. You have given me comfort and have spoken kindly to your servant, though I do not have the standing of one of your servant girls." So as you read that, doesn't that stimulate in you the desire to be that kind of a person, not just to be certain the person's cared for, but that you elevate them, you encourage them, you speak words of honor to them and treat them with that gentleness and that kindness?

Jesus did this every day. Think of what it was like to be a broken-hearted or disease-ridden or suffering sinner around Jesus, never was there one who is gentler and kinder and more tender-hearted to broken-hearted sinners. So many stories in Jesus's life. How did he treat the sinner, the woman who was washing Jesus's feet with her tears and drying them with her hair? At one point he just shuts out the Pharisee host that he's eating dinner, he shuts everyone out, focuses on her. And says, "Take heart, daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace." He just focused on her and gives her love and tenderness, forgiveness. 

Or think about the widow at Nain in Luke chapter 7, is coming out and grieving bitterly. She’s a widow and she's burying that day her only son, and Jesus goes right to her. And looks at her and says, "Don't cry." That just moves me, is the first thing is toward the grieving woman and says, "Don't cry," and then He raises this son from the bier, from the dead. So there's this tenderness, this sweetness, this kindness that you see. Mothers show it all the time to their children, you think about a little five-year-old, he skins his knee, what he wants is mommy, he goes running and she's gonna pick him up and she's gonna cuddle him and she's gonna stroke his hair off his forehead and kiss away his tears, and she's going to bind the wound on the knee, and it's just that's what... You just know that kind of mothering is the essential word is kindness, she's showing kindness. There's so many examples of this in life.

I think I thought about this and when I went and researched it. I said, "Yeah, that's amazing." Tim Tebow, the quarterback and now baseball player, has just developed ministries of kindness that you should research, it's remarkable. I had heard this story about how he took a special needs young woman, a teenage young woman out to a prom, got a limo, dressed up in a tux, did this a number of years ago, and now it's developed into a whole ministry that he and his wife do. And it's called The Night to Shine, they do for special needs kids and set them up, making them feel precious, making them feel special. Well, it's just one small part of the kind of kindness that Tim Tebow has been doing in the name of Christ for years. When he was the starting quarterback for the Denver Broncos, and he led them to their first playoff victory. And this is in 2012, in seven years. Every game when he was starting quarterback for the Broncos, he chose someone that was going through a trial, suffering. It could be a teenage boy or girl, could be an older man, whatever brought them to the Broncos game and just showed them the day of their life. And in the hour that followed that incredible victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers, when the world was going crazy over Tim Tebow, and there were 9,000 tweets per second for that hour, he was spending that hour with….Bailey Knaub was her name, a young girl, teenage girl who had been through 73 surgeries, and he was just totally focused on her after the game, for the hour after the game. "Did you get enough to eat? Did you have a great time?" "Yes, sir." Incredible. And so it wasn't just what he did, it’s how he did it. 

I picture the “not just what you do, but how you do it” from a scene in the movie, Ben-Hur, the old Ben-Hur movie with Charlton Heston. And Charlton Heston is condemned to the galley, to become a galley slave, and then condemned really to die as a galley slave. Then he's marched by foot across the desert to the port city, and they're not.…he's dying, probably literally dying of thirst, and he collapses to the ground. They're at a well, and all of the prisoners are being given water by the soldiers, and they’re throwing gorges with water at him and they're just trying to get drops of water, but the guard is singling Charlton Heston and saying, "No water for him." Jesus in the story, before he had begun his public ministry, comes over and Heston's on the ground. He picks up his head, he takes the water and washes his face with it tenderly, and then lifts his head, pours the water into his mouth. It isn't just giving the water, the Roman soldiers were doing that, but they're throwing it at him. Jesus did it with these tender hands of love and literally saved his life in the story, he later comes around and comes to faith in Christ. So this is the act of kindness. It's not just what you do, but it's how you do it. 

Now, how does our Christianity enable us to be kind? Well, first of all, we see the kindness of God to us. As Titus says, "When the kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us not because of good deeds we have done, but because of his washing of rebirth and renewal through the Holy Spirit, the kindness of God in saving us." And then he puts the spirit of kindness, the Holy Spirit, who's depicted as a dove coming down from heaven, he puts the spirit of kindness in us so that we do good works, we yearn to do good works in such a way that it will bless other people. So again, this is a matter for looking in the mirror of God's Word and asking your conscience, “Am I a kind person? Would the people around me say that I'm characterized by good deeds, a river of good deeds done with a gentleness and under light?”

That's what kindness is. Is that happening in my life? And again, it's gonna be that “painful delight,” we're gonna see the pain of how unkind we frequently are, but hopefully we're also gonna see evidence that God has worked some kindness in us, but we want more, and so we have hope. We look ahead for the rest of our lives and say, I could be an incredibly kind person the rest of my life in the spirit of this text. And not only that, when I get to heaven, I'm gonna be perfected. In the spirit of kindness, I will spend eternity in perfect love in heaven. So I want to give you a sense of the pain of the conviction. I want you to see the ways that you've been unkind. I wanna see it in my life, so that we can hate that sin and move away from it, and then in hope say yes, but I know that I'm alive, 'cause I feel the pain. I know I'm alive because there's evidence of fruit too, but boy, I want more, I wanna put the sin to death, the unkindness to death, and now I wanna start living more and more as I've never done before. Living for the glory of God and goodness in other people's lives. 

Now, if you having clicked in here today are not a Christian, I'm so glad that you have come to this livestream, and what I want you to do is I want you to feel the attraction of the kindness of Jesus, our Savior, the kindness of God. Let me read this text again. This is Titus 3:3-6, "At one time we were….we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived, and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures, we lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. But when the kindness and love of God, our Savior appeared, he saved us not because of righteous things we had done, but because of His mercy, He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit whom He poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ, our Savior." I'm pleading with you like I did to that guy on the plane, come to Christ, swim in the ocean of His kindness. Understand how long-suffering he's been to you and just swim in the grace and the mercy. Jesus died on the cross for all of our sins of un-lovingness. He died on the cross for that 'cause we were foolish and deceived and hating one another, but Jesus took all of that on Himself and died, and on the third day, God raised Him to life, and He gives us the spirit of a new resurrected life by which we can be long-suffering, patient with each other, and by which we can show kindness to one another. Close with me in prayer.

Father, we thank You for the Word of God. I thank You for the pain, and I thank You for the delight. And God, I pray that You would continue to work both of these aspects in us. Show us our sinfulness, show us our impatience. The fact that we're not very long-suffering, we don't put up with much, show us our unkindness and then turn it all around. Lord, make us incredibly patient with other sinners as You've been patient toward us, and then Lord open up the fountain of our hearts that we would just have a river of good deeds of kindness shown to the people in our lives. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.