Love's Relentless Positivity (1 Corinthians Sermon 51)

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a verse-by-verse expository sermon on 1 Corinthians 13:6-7. The main subject of the sermon is the relentless hope and endurance that love brings.

- SERMON TRANSCRIPT -

 Well, turn in your Bibles as we continue our study in 1 Corinthians 13. Looking at the next section of this. And I entitled this sermon, “Love's Relentless Positivity.” One of the greatest gifts of the Gospel is the security of God's unconditional love. That God, we believe, as scripture teaches, set his love on his people from eternity past. Before we were born or had done anything, good or bad, God set his love on us. And God, in his heart, just knowing us and loving us in his infinite mind, his omniscience, his timelessness, his eternality. He said in Jeremiah 31:3, "I have loved you with an everlasting love, and therefore in loving kindness I have drawn you." And that gives us security. We're also taught that the greatest display of God's love happened at a moment of redemptive history when we were at our worst. As Romans 5:8 says, "God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners Christ died for us." So at that very time when we were enemies of God, when we were repulsive to his holy eyes, when we were rebels and were darkened in our minds and understandings and lived lives according to that darkness, Christ died for us, the greatest display of love there's ever been, when we're at our worst.

And so now also God continues to love us in Christ, not because of what we are, but because of his unconditional love for us. Even the best of us on our best days on earth are immeasurably short of the standard of holiness and righteousness required for heaven. Even when we've been sanctified daily for decades, walking with the Lord faithfully, there is still immeasurable corruption in our hearts and therefore in our lives, but God loves us in Christ, and he loves us for what we will be, not so much what we are. Some day we Christians are gonna be perfectly conformed to the standard of love we read about in 1 Corinthians 13. We're gonna be perfectly conformed to Christ. We're gonna be glorious. We're gonna shine like the sun in the kingdom of our Heavenly Father. And God sees that future right now, because he is eternal and he knows what we will be. Now, this kind of unconditional love in Christ gives us amazing security. It puts a solid rock under our feet every day. As the Psalmist said in Psalm 40:2-3, "He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth and a hymn of praise to our God." What a picture of salvation and security.

"God continues to love us in Christ, not because of what we are, but because of his unconditional love for us. "

Now, 1 Corinthians 13 is not about God's unconditional love for us in Christ. It's about our love for one another horizontally. It is human love for other human beings, that's what the chapter is about. Not only that, but it's human love for other flawed and imperfect, indeed even sinful, human beings. That's what it's about. That's why we're told, love is long-suffering. You don't have to be long-suffering with perfect people. Love is not easily angered. Love keeps no record of wrongs. You won't need that in heaven. Nobody is gonna make you angry in heaven, nobody's gonna do you wrong in heaven; there's no record of wrongs there. So this love chapter is designed for the here and now, for us as flawed, sinful human beings to love other flawed, sinful human beings. But our love for each other is patterned after God's unconditional love for us in Christ. We are to love each other as Christ has loved us. John 13:34-35, Jesus said, "A new command I give you: love one another as I have loved you so you must love one another, by this will all men know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

So as such, we're called in the verses that we're going to look at today, to a rugged kind of love. Verse 7, "Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." That's one translation. This is an unsinkable love; this is love like a buoyant cork that just you can't keep it down. It just keeps popping up. It's just relentless. It sticks with flawed, imperfect people who are still sinning every day, it's a love that's relentlessly positive in that discouraging situation, hopeful about what the grace of God can do in that person's life. It never gives up. And that love is instrumental in the church work we do, in sanctifying one another, as the Holy Spirit uses us in each other's lives, that we would have that kind of resilient buoyant love for each other is instrumental in our sanctification.

I. Love Does Not Rejoice in Evil

Now, we begin this morning in verse 6 with the statement, “Love does not rejoice in evil.” This is the end of a long list of negatives that we've been looking at in 1 Corinthians 13; this is the eighth of the eight negatives. It began with the words, love does not envy. So love has no jealous or angry feelings over the blessings that God gives to other people. Conversely, love delights in those blessings and actually seeks to multiply those blessings as much as we possibly can- we want other people to be blessed by God. Love does not envy. We've also seen that love is not boastful, concerning the blessings God gives us, we don't lord it over other people and mock them that they don't have them, thus, I guess, trying to create that kind of envy in the other person, not at all. We see all of the blessings that God gives us as really meant for other people, we're conduits of blessing, that's what love should be. Thirdly, we've seen love is not proud. Pride is the root of all manner of human wickedness and sin. Love, however, is fundamentally humble, it's deeply aware of our status before God, both as creatures and as sinners and so we're humbled by that and, therefore, we consider others better than ourselves, love considers their needs more important than our own, that's what love does. Love, fourthly, is not rude, it doesn't break the rules of social graciousness, it doesn't strip other people of honor, it doesn't behave inappropriately, it doesn't talk too loudly, doesn't shove itself forward, doesn't take the biggest piece, it doesn't interrupt, it doesn't use foul language, it doesn't dress inappropriately for the occasion. It's not ill mannered; it holds the door for people walking behind it. It is a polished, graceful pattern of behavior appropriate to every situation. Love is not rude. Love is not selfish. It's not relentlessly committed to self-interest, as we all are, naturally, committed to self-interest, disconnected from God or anyone else, or that fleshly drive to feed self. Love is against that. Love expands. It's expansive to include others, so where our hearts are not constricted, pulled in, but instead love causes to expand and to not be selfish, to take in others. Sixthly, last week we saw, love is not easily angered. Doesn't have a short fuse, it's not hair triggered. It has a long, slow fuse, doesn't get angry based on self-interest; doesn't have revenge at its heart. And then love keeps no record of wrongs, a seventh of the negatives. Constantly aware of the sins that others have committed against us, keeping a record, being unforgiving, being bitter, being sour toward people. Love does not do that, but instead love has a gracious willingness to forgive, a yearning to see other people have the same release and covering that we have had. So that's the seven negatives we've looked at; now we look at the eighth, love does not rejoice in evil. Now, this has to do with the basic wiring of the human heart. When the Holy Spirit works saving grace in our hearts, he lines our hearts up with God's heart, that's what conformity to Christ is about.

It's impossible to put into words how much God loves righteousness and hates wickedness. God made a beautiful universe. He declared everything good. Think about how pristine and pure it was on that first seventh day when he looked at everything he'd made and it was beautiful. But sin, wickedness, evil, entered into the universe and has destroyed so much of that beauty. Not all of it, but so much of it. And that destruction is still continuing day after day. So God has a perfect hatred for wickedness and is adamantly opposed to it. Jesus Christ, as the Son of God, the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, perfectly reflects that, as well. So God the Father says to Christ the Son, “You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness, therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy.” So, when we're converted, our hearts are aligned to Christ, aligned to this disposition to love righteousness and hate wickedness. We are then attracted to righteousness, we see righteousness, holiness, as beautiful and attractive, we yearn for it, and we hate wickedness, we see it more clearly than ever before and we are repulsed from it. Though, sadly, still not perfectly in either case.

Now, if we love others, therefore we will hate all wickedness in reference to them. What then does it mean to rejoice in wickedness, as love does not rejoice in wickedness? The word rejoice is a strong one, as though there's some kind of pleasure, some kind of delight in it, a strong attraction to wickedness, just kind of yearning for it or delighting in evil. As Isaiah 5:20 says, "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil. To those who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter." That's perverse. In our natural unregenerate state, that's what our hearts are like. We are attracted to dark things; we find a secret delight in them. In this context, I think it has to do with the sins and wickedness that we see or hear about in other people. The daily news services, even social media that streams information to our smartphones brings an unending stream, it seems, of wickedness and evil about other people: reports of their crime, of their lusts, their sexual immorality, their greed, their filthy language, their rebellion against authority. It's a steady stream of it.

Now lost people, it seems, love to hear about wickedness in others, they delight in the news of a leader's closet sins being exposed, or those of a movie star and athlete gets prime billing. It's like our souls, unregenerate souls, are like carrion birds, like these nasty turkey vultures, you ever see them? Like six or seven of them by the side of the road; has there ever been an uglier bird than a turkey vulture? And it's got an ugly job to do. I guess we just should thank God for how he's arranged the system here, but you know when you see a bunch of these birds, there's a carcass down below; these birds just have a taste for what's nasty. Repulsive as it is, there's even still some of that in our hearts. We love to hear the sins of others, even the juicy details. Sometimes it shows up in people wanting others to fall. We love to see their comeuppance. Apart from the regenerating work of God, we love to see the successful man or woman be exposed in terms of their darker side, now they don't talk so proudly, they don't walk so proudly, they've been stripped down, they've been lowered, sometimes people even gain an advantage from the fall of others because of their sins, maybe the embezzlement at the office or the office affair gets exposed and now the way is open for you to get that corner office, and so there's some delight in it. Politics these days sadly seem to focus on this filth. It seems like both Democrats and Republicans, and I'll extend even to Independents, I don't wanna leave anyone out, seems to just unleash secret investigations to find out dirt on people. They look at people in their past, what they did in college, are there any incriminating photos or anything in their social media stream or something that we can use as a weapon, searching out for the dirt so they can destroy a person.

The most common form of rejoicing and wickedness is gossip. Proverbs 26:22 says, “The words of a gossip are like choice morsels, they go down to a man's in-most parts.” Churches are sadly riddled with gossips, who find artful ways of telling the secrets of others, often cloaked in prayer requests. Elders have to shepherd and we have to go after sin and deal with it, etcetera, but we have to be very careful about what we share and how we think about it. Why do people love wickedness? Why do they love other people's sins? Well, I think there's a basic pride that we can feel better about ourselves in our sin. If we see someone fall it makes us feel better, it also gives us an excuse for the native judgmentalism we have in our hearts, that moral superiority. Non-Christians love stories of the sins of Christians because it excuses them from considering the perfect claims of Christ who never sinned.

Jesus was able to stand in front of his accusers and say, “Can any of you find me guilty of sin?” It's incredible thing that Jesus said; he was pure. Christianity is a pure religion based on a pure perfect human being, but when non-Christians see the sins of Christians and they get exposed, especially leaders, pastors, others, they feel like, "They're all hypocrites, so I don't need to look at my own sin, I don't need to look at Christianity." Well, what's so wrong about all this, what's wrong about rejoicing in wickedness? Well, it forgets the wickedness that we have before the sight of God, and how much damage also the wickedness does to those people in the world.

God has overwhelming grief when he sees the sin in this world. Jesus wept over Jerusalem, and because of their sins and their wickedness and the consequences that would come. Godly people grieve whenever God's laws are violated. Whenever they're broken. Psalm 1:19, "Tears streamed from my eyes because your laws are broken." You think about how 2 Peter 2 tells us that Lot in Sodom was a righteous man and said, that righteous man living among them day after day was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard. Human rejoicing in wickedness underestimates, therefore, what that sin is doing to the other person. If we really love someone, we want that person to be free from all sin. We see sin as spiritual poison and we, our hearts, expand to that person and want them to be set free from what made them do that evil thing. In church discipline cases there is sin exposed in a person. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5 that the response should be grief. 1 Corinthians 5:2 says, "You are proud; shouldn't you rather have been filled with grief, and put out of your fellowship the men who did this?" So there's this grieving over sin that should be. There should be no smugness at a time like that, no secret rejoicing in that person's downfall, only a deep sorrow and a desire that that person should repent and be restored and saved.

"Human rejoicing in wickedness underestimates, therefore, what that sin is doing to the other person. If we really love someone, we want that person to be free from all sin."

II. Love Rejoices with the Truth

Well, conversely then, what does it mean that love rejoices with the truth? That's the flip side of not rejoicing in wickedness, the essence of a heart of love toward another person is to deeply yearn for their blessedness. We wanna see them blessed. The ultimate blessing is the righteousness that comes through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We wanna see that happen in the other people's lives. We delight in seeing other people prosper spiritually. Notice, interestingly, Paul does not use the mirror image word, “Love does not delight in wickedness, but rejoices in…” we would think righteousness. But he doesn't say that. He said, “Love rejoices with the truth.” And so, for me, as a Bible reader, interpreter, I think, "What does that mean? What is the truth?" And it doesn't take long for us to realize that Jesus Christ is the truth. John 14:6, Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Isn't that incredible? That Jesus doesn't say, merely, “I teach the truth,” or “I speak the truth,” or “I love the truth.” “I am the truth.” “I am the truth.” And so, it rejoices with Christ in that person's life. We could also extend it to the word of God, as it says in John 17:17, "Sanctify them by the truth, your word is truth." So we don't delight in wickedness or evil, we rejoice with the truth that is Jesus, and the truth that is in God's word, and specifically the truth at work in someone's life. We rejoice to see God's word unleashed in a sinner's life. Like Paul did with the Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians 2:13, he said, "We also thank God continually, because when you receive the word of God, which you heard from us, you were accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God which is at work in you who believe." Isn't that beautiful? God's word at work in other people's lives, that's what we delight in. To see God's word have its way with a sinner, it's a beautiful thing. So we delight in that, we enjoy other people's salvation. We delight in that good news.

Think about the cycle of parables in Luke 15, the lost sheep, the lost coin, and then the lost son, we usually call the prodigal son. All three end in a big celebration. For example, the lost sheep, it says, “When the man finds it, he then joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. And then he calls his friends and his neighbors together, and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I've found my lost sheep.’" Jesus said in Luke 15:7, "I tell you that in the same way there'll be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who do not need to repent." And then he does the same thing with the lost coin, the woman that loses the coin, “Or suppose a woman has 10 silver coins and loses one, does she not light a lamp, sweep the house, search carefully until she finds it. And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’ In the same way [Jesus says] I tell you there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." As I read that, I think it's God the one doing the rejoicing. He is the one that was searching. He is the one that was seeking the lost. And when he finds one sinner and brings that person to repentance and faith, he celebrates. So he's saying to the angels, "Watch me while I celebrate," and they join him, too. And then at the end of the parable of the prodigal son, remember what happens? The father says, "Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate, for this son of mine was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found." So they began to celebrate.

So all three parables teach the same thing, which is celebration over lost sinners who repent. That's what love does, it rejoices with the truth unleashed in a sinner's life to the end of their salvation. That's what it does. So, truly, also in a Christian relationship, if someone loves you, they'll want to see you, not only have your sins forgiven, be born again, but see you make progress in the Christian life. We delight in the truth unleashed in a person's life in terms of sanctification, progressive holiness. We celebrate little and big victories in each other's lives. I think that's part of what it means to watch over one another in brotherly love. We're not just making sure they don't do bad things, but rejoicing when the truth is at work in someone's life, celebrating.

My discipler at MIT, Tim Schumann, he was with Campus Crusade for Christ, he did this very well. He's really good at it. You picture someone... Tim was this for me, who, the Boston Marathon was big where I grew up, and just the streets are lined with people cheering on runners. And if you're a runner in the Boston marathon, you wanna get your friends and family and they'll tell you where they're gonna stand, and they stand there with signs and they cheer you on. And that's what Tim did for me. That's what we can do for each other. Person's running a race with endurance; they're running a marathon race of righteousness and holiness. Cheer them on. Let's see the way that God's at work in each other's lives and delight in it.

Alright, having said that, then Paul turns to the statements of the four aspects that we talked about at the beginning. And I'm gonna read the New American Standard, verse 7, "Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." Now, I have grouped these together under the heading of the sermon, “Love's Relentless Positivity.” Love is buoyantly optimistic despite the long journey of the daily effects of sin in that other person's life. The fact of indwelling sin and sin's stubborn habits, they're so incredibly difficult to break. All of you who have been walking with the Lord a long time, you can say, "Amen, I know exactly what you're talking about." Sin is hard to break. It's stubborn, relentless.

Now, you wouldn't need this if you were in heaven with the person, if that person was shining like the sun in the kingdom of their father, and so were you, you don't need this. This is for here and now. This is for until we get there. You wouldn't have to believe all things, hope all things, endure all things with a glorified saint in heaven. But we need it now, and the reason for that is indwelling sin. As Paul said in Romans 7, "The very thing I hate, I do. The thing I want to do, I do not do." That's why we need these four phrases here, because of indwelling sin. That's what makes all human relationships on earth difficult. Sin in Christian relationships, it's residual habits of sin, the stubbornness of those habits that makes marriage difficult. It makes parenting difficult. It makes relating to your parents difficult. It makes sibling relationships difficult. Friends, it's what makes local church such a challenge, because we're all sinners. We all have that indwelling sin, and we bother each other and torment each other with our indwelling sin, and so we need help.

Notice how two of the words are overtly negative, "Love bears all things and endures all things." But what do you have to bear? What do you have to endure but sin in somebody's life and the effects of those sins. And even the two positive words, "Love believes all things, and hopes all things,” seems to have to do with sin as well, believing the best about someone, hoping that they'll change eventually, things like that. Paul's point here is that love is buoyant. And he culminates in the statement "Love never fails."

III. Love Bears All Things

So let's walk through them briefly. First, "Love bears all things." Now, first, we have to say a word about all things, and there are different translations. You've seen different translations even this morning. Clearly, Paul does not mean that love just glosses over sin or accepts it. Churches still have to discipline sin. Adultery still can result in divorce. There are consequences. Crime still has consequences. Paul made it plain that love rejects all manner of bad behaviors that I walked through earlier in the sermon. Envy, boasting, arrogance, rudeness, selfishness, anger, resentment, wickedness, these are not okay. So we're not just gonna put up with those things. We have to fight all of them.

And also, "Love believes all things" certainly has nothing to do with false doctrine or non-Christian religions, not like "Mormonism is fine. Love believes all things." It's not like that at all. So what does it mean? I think it just... “All things” means always or in all circumstances. Also, the sins that we do deal with, I think we know what they are. There are some sins that trigger church discipline, and then there are others that we just have to put up with day after day that don't. They're just issues that we struggle with in daily life. I think that's what it means.

So love bears all things. Now, to bear with something means to put up with it or to carry it. If you're gonna bear a burden, you're carrying it, like carrying a weight. The idea is that someone's sin is making your life difficult. Someone's behavior is making your life hard, and you have to bear with it. I think about something that's irksome or annoying, like imagine when the alternator belt in someone's car needs tightening, and it screeches every time the car starts, I think about that. Or fingernails on a blackboard, pretty soon people won't know what that means. But some older people know what chalk and blackboards are, and they know what fingernails on a blackboard sounds like. Fingernails on a white board, not the same, but fingernails on a blackboard is horrible. So you get the feeling of things that jangle and irritate and annoy in a relationship.

Now, there are amoral annoyances, and perhaps this is talking about that. We just put up with each other, honestly. Our bodies take up space, and we do things with our bodies. And they're not moral issues, but you just have to get used to it. In pre-marital counseling, we say you realize that you're gonna have to get used to each other. It's gonna take a while. "No, no, we love each other." Alright, let's talk after a year, give free post marital counseling, and let's talk about "How's it going?" So they're just habit patterns, the way that people live their lives, what they do with their laundry, and what they do when they laugh, their laugh. You didn't know they snored? They do, there's just different things. Those are any more... And you could say, “Well, is that included?” Yes, it's included. Include everything under this. Whatever you have to bear, bear it, but I think it's, especially when it comes to sins, moral patterns that really are sinful, interrupting, something we talk a lot about in our family, and we all do it and we all hate it.

Anyone is- really gets upset about interruption is a hypocrite, 'cause we all do it, but it's like, "Oh God, help me not to interrupt, it's so rude." But you gotta bear with it, sinful anger, the other person's an angry person and they're working on it, they're trying but they're still... It just happens, you gotta bear with it, or procrastination, you just put off things, bad habits, they're messy, or over-eating or watching too many sports or overspending, these are moral issues. Now, forgiveness is essentially what we're talking about here, you're carrying another person's load, just like Jesus did for us, Isaiah 53:4, “Surely he has born our grief and carried our sorrows.” So we're in a Christian love relationship, we carry each other's loads, we bear all things at the form of that first thing we talked about, that love is long suffering, we put up with each other and we're willing to cover their sins, like Proverbs 10:12 says, “Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers over all wrongs.” So love bears with all manner of difficulties, annoyances, irritations, sins of that level that we've discussed, and it doesn't throw in the towel easily or quickly.

IV. Love Believes All Things

Secondly, love believes all things. One of the most interesting studies I've done, this is one of the only, I think maybe the only use of the word believe that isn't tied to Christ or the Gospel of God. Here we're believing other people, it makes it an interesting verse, what am I supposed to believe about a person, especially knowing that they're sinners, this is what we call as Baptists in local church life, the judgment of charity, we're going to give each other the benefit of the doubt in our Christian confession. Local churches work on the basic assumption that people are in a positive way, what they appear to be, that if they claim to be a Christian, unless there's contravening evidence, we're gonna believe they're Christians. We're gonna believe that about them. We're not gonna assume there's some dark secret lurking and at some point it's gonna come out, happens to everybody, everybody's got a skeleton in the closet. Friends, do you not realize how that would destroy local church fellowship? Imagine that, it's like, “I know it hasn't happened with you yet, but sooner or later the truth's coming out with you, so I really can't be nice to you, I need to treat you in advance how I'm gonna treat you then,” I mean that's- that, you can't do local church that way. So fundamentally, that's what we mean by the judgment of charity. If someone seems to be a Christian we will accept their Christian confession. We are well aware of the universality of sin, we're well aware that no one that we deal with physically here on Earth is perfect, yet everyone's struggling with sin, we get all that, but we just basically put a white robe on them, like we will in heaven. In heaven I believe we'll have a perfect understanding of everyone sinfulness, and we will know how completely covered in grace they are and how transformed so that they are radically a different person, and so we're going to wear white robes in heaven and it's gonna be radiant and glorious, and we're not going to shame each other or be shamed in heaven. In the meantime, that's kind of how we treat each other, unless there's the need to deal with sin like in church discipline. So, and, even in those situations, in any situation, basically, we're accepting that people are innocent until proven guilty, that's what love believes all things in the Christian life is. If there's any doubt about a person's guilt or innocence level, see that person as innocent until there's evidence, clear evidence.

And love is clearly rooting for the person to be vindicated, if there is evidence of some sinfulness, we're still seeking to see the grace at work in that person's life and believe that they can be won over. In this way we are not at all like Job's friends, my goodness, with friends like that- we know that Job's friends did best when they sat with him quietly and said nothing; that was good. But once they started in on Job, it was incredible, like the worst- this is the low point for me, Eliphaz in Job 22, listen to this, "Is not your wickedness endless, are not your sins great? You demanded security from your brothers, for no reason, you strip men of their clothing, leaving them naked, you gave no water to the weary and you withheld food from the hungry, though you were a powerful man owning land, an honored man living on it, and you sent widows away empty-handed and broke the strength of the fatherless, that's why snares are all around you. That's why sudden peril terrifies you." None of that's true. None of it. He just assumed it was true. We know from scripture that Job was a righteous man, and in Job 31, he said he didn't do any of these things, he actually cared for widows and orphans, and he was a righteous man, but that's what it doesn't look like to believe all things.

Love believes the best about someone, it doesn't immediately listen to hearsay and rumors and gossip. Ultimately the believing the best about the Lord's grace in someone else's life. “I know that he or she is a sinner, I know that, but I also know they're a Christian,” and I know this: that, “Where sin abounds, grace is going to abound all the more.” Romans 5:20, sin is great, grace is greater. I believe that about each other, we believe that about each other, we believe that even the most stubborn sin patterns can be put to death, we expect and trust that God can work in that person's life, so he'll be much more like Christ 10 years now than they are today. I believe that, in marriage, in parenting in pastoring, in discipling sinners, we believe that all things are possible in terms of sanctification. For anyone that believes Christ, they can grow in grace.

So this confidence, then, allows us to address sin in the family, in the church, redemptively. We go confidently to the sinner and we're believing that, even though this immediate process is painful, it will have a good result. Galatians 6:1, it says, “Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently.” So there is that sense of, “We're gonna go and restore this person, we're gonna win them back,” or again, Luke 17:3-4, this is a challenging passage: “If your brother sins, rebuke him. If he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you,” listen to this, “seven times in a single day,” can I just stop right there? That's a bad day. The two of you are having a very bad day. Anyway, “if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.” Wow, well, that's what it looks like to believe all things like, “I'm gonna keep forgiving this person, I'm gonna keep with this person.” We don't just give up on people, we don't- the church doesn't shoot her wounded. Think about the case between Paul and Barnabas over John Mark. Remember that, how Mark abandoned them on the first missionary journey, and Paul's like, “you're done,” he's not gonna take him on the second missionary journey, no way. Well, Barnabas starts to advocate for him, Paul won't have it, and the two of them had a sharp dispute, this is in Acts 15. Barnabas means son of encouragement. He was just... That was his ministry. Putting an arm around somebody, he did it to Saul when he first introduced him to the Jerusalem church, that's who he was. Paul's not hearing anything of it, Paul didn't believe all things about John Mark, but Barnabas believed in him, and in the end was vindicated. And Paul vindicated him in 2 Timothy 4-11, he says, “Get Mark and bring him with you because he's helpful to me in my ministry.” So we believe all things about...

V. Love Hopes All Things

Thirdly, love hopes all things. What that means is that love is fundamentally optimistic, as I've been saying about what God's grace can do, and we believe in a bright future for this person, “I believe in you. I believe in what God can do, I'm hopeful for you.” Do you not see how redemptive that is to be able to say that to somebody? For parents to say that to teens that are struggling, “I got to believe in what God's doing in your life. I believe you're gonna be fruitful, you're gonna walk with the Lord,” you speak these kinds of hopeful words. Imagine the alternative. “You're a loser. Sin's gonna win in your life, there's nothing you can do,” that is Satan talking! He strips us of hope, let's not do Satan's work for him, he doesn't need any help from us, Let's speak hope into people's lives and say, “I believe in what God's doing,” not because we believe that person is so awesome and so great when none of us is awesome and great, but because God's grace is greater. So we hope for the best. We see the possibility of a glorious outcome for the person that we love, and we are hopeful. I just always picture the father of the prodigal son, I always have him at the end of the driveway, they didn't have driveways back then, but anyway, that's how I picture him, what can I do about it? But there he is at the end of the driveway. Day after day after day after day after day, waiting for the son to come home. It says in Romans 10:21, concerning Israel, “All day long, I've held up my hands to a disobedient obstinate people.” That's what God does. 

VI. Love Endures All Things

 So love hopes all things, and then finally, love endures all things. So I think the Greek word here refers to a soldier that's put at his post and he doesn't leave it. You're just there, you're posted in this person's life, and you're not gonna leave the post. You never give up. I think about the French soldiers at Verdun, where they said, “They shall not pass.” It became a watch word for a nation in World War I. “They shall not pass, I'm not leaving this position.” Or Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain at the Battle of Gettysburg, he took the extreme left of the Union line and just would not give up that position 'cause he knew that if he did that their line would be rolled up like a carpet and it happened at Chancellorsville, and so he just stood firm, and so you picture those military issues, you're gonna say, “I'm gonna stand here and I'm not moving in this person's life, I'm not gonna give up. I'm going to endure whatever it takes to see God's grace win in this person's life.” Now, let me tell you something, in local church there's so many tragic stories that just are unfolding in front of us all the time, we know for some people, this is maybe the hardest thing that God calls them to do. Think about parents who have grown kids that are not walking with the Lord, maybe they're addicted on drugs, maybe they're just living a very secular, successful life and they have no room for Jesus, and these parents weep over their wandering kids day after day. Or think about marriages that are just severely wounded by sin and each of them are trying to make it work, but it's so hard, and you know you need to forgive, and you know that the road is hard and you believe it's worth doing for the sake of the kids, for the community to fight for the marriage, but it's just hard. Think about pastors that are doing revitalization work in some dying churches in which there's a remnant of faithful Christians, but so much unbelief, so many unregenerate church members who have so much pain and suffering and they're pounding on the pastor, making life very difficult for him, and he is called, he feels he's called by God to stay at that post and believe in the future of that church, it's hard work, love endures all things. Sometimes that's all that people have in those situations, love never fails. It just doesn't give up. It's like God said, of sinning Israel in the most potent, I think one of the most painful books in the Bible is Hosea, remember the one where the prophet mimicking God had to marry a prostitute. It was very sad, and it just talked about the wandering of God's people into sin. But he says very powerfully, God says in Hosea 11:8, “How can I give you up, oh Ephraim? How can I hand you over, oh Israel?” And he says, “My heart is changed within me. All my compassion is aroused.” “I can't give you up,” God says.

VII. How Do We Live This Out?

Alright, well, how do we live this out? Like every verse in 1 Corinthians 13, it's challenging, isn't it? It's challenging. Remember what I said a few weeks ago about how there is kind of like bad news, discouraging news to some degree, maybe the hard part, the painful part, is you read this, you're like, “I'm not like this. I know I wanna be, but I'm not like this.” So that's the bad news. But then the good news is, first and foremost, there is, if you're a Christian, evidence of some grace in your life, isn't there, there's some aspects you can see that God is working some of this in you. And, furthermore, just the fact that you feel pain and convicted means you're alive spiritually, the Holy Spirit's at work in your life. So that's good. And then the second aspect of the good part is: think of what your life will look like over the next 10 years if you put this into practice, how much better everything, not just this one sermon, but all of 1 Corinthians 13, you put this in practice like you've never done before, your life will get so much better, you'll be so much more fruitful, think about that. And then thirdly, think about heaven, we're going there eventually in 1 Corinthians 13, to a world where things will be perfect, this is the time of the imperfect, we're going to the world of the perfect, and we're looking forward to that. So one discouraging thing, how much this hurts and you're not doing it, we're not loving, but three encouraging things. But above all, the first and foremost thing you need to do is ask yourself, "Am I a Christian?" You can't live out this kind of supernatural life as an unbeliever. And so I ask you, I appeal to you to look at your conscience, look at your heart and ask; are you born again? Have you trusted in Jesus as your Lord and Savior? Have you come to the cross? Have you realized that you're unloving, that you've lived a life of un-love, as we all have, that you violated God's laws, that you've not loved him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, you've not loved your neighbor as yourself. You are a sinner, and do you realize that God, knowing you could not save yourself sent his Son, the perfect savior of the world, Jesus Christ, who perfectly did love God with all of his heart, and perfectly did love his neighbor as himself, won for us, a perfect righteousness that he just offers you as a gift, and he offers to take all of your filthy rags of sin and take it on himself and die under the judgment of God, the wrath of God, which we deserve. We deserve to go to hell. But if you will just repent of all of your darkness, all of your unloving attitudes and actions, and come to faith in Christ, God will begin, through the power of the Holy Spirit to work in you. So come to Christ. If you are a Christian, you need to come to the cross again and again to do this, realize that you're a sinner saved by grace, let it humble you, and then say, "Lord, I pray that you would just take this aspect and work this in me." If you have a difficult person in your life, somebody you have been thinking about the whole sermon, and you almost wanna say, "Pastor, if you knew this person, you would have preached differently." It's like... I don't think so. I think it's exactly because of that person that we need these words, but can I just urge you, take that person to the Lord in prayer. Maybe it's a child, an offspring, maybe young, maybe not, as I said, maybe somebody grown and you're seeking to point that person day after day to Christ, and it's hard, and day after day, they're breaking your heart. Be mindful of the limitless strength that comes day after day from the love of God, and then just pray, say, “Lord, this person is pushing me hard every day, I want to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things. Would you please work that in me? Enable me to live out these four phrases. I find myself, Lord, getting impatient and carnal, and frustrated and irritable and acting badly in this relationship, would you forgive me and would you work this in me?” This kind of prayer is so effective when we're struggling in loveless-ness.

Well, I'm gonna close this time now in prayer and pray these things for all of us. Father, we thank you for the purity and the perfection of your word. I am undone by it week after week, convicted by it, but I thank you, oh Lord, that that shows that I'm alive and that the Spirit is at work in my life, and it also shows me ways I can grow and that I should be optimistic and hopeful about what you can do over the next 10 years, if you let me live in these areas. And Lord, I pray for First Baptist Church, I pray for the members of our church, I pray for husbands with their wives and wives with their husbands. I pray for parents with their growing children, even if they're babies or toddlers or maybe they're in elementary school, they're older, maybe they're teens, maybe they're fully grown, Lord, I pray that you'd give them a gracious heart of love toward their kids. And Lord, I pray that we as a church would extend that to one another, we have different convictions, different IDs, controversial issues happen in our nation and in current events and we don't agree on how to think about it, what to do. God, I pray make us a loving church, put that love on display here at First Baptist Church in Durham. Lord, as we have one more week before we gather some of us anyway, next week, Lord, help us to, as Andy said, pray for each other, be mindful of each other, encourage each other. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.