>> Jen: Well, good morning, friends and faithful listeners. Today we're going to talk about the most famous chapter possibly of the entire New Testament, the love chapter. All right, I'm excited to get into this chapter, and I think that it's going to be a long one because for some reason, all of my episodes now are like 40 minutes long. Like, really, They. I do end up talking for a really
long time. Now, granted, I edit things and cut some things out, so the episode is typically shorter than I think it's going to be, um, when I'm all done with it. But I keep joking that my podcast episodes back four years ago when I first started were about five minutes long, and then suddenly they were about 10 minutes. And I thought that was good for a while.
Kind of moved up to like 15 minutes after that during the book of, uh, Leviticus and things, and then they stayed at 20 for a really solid amount of time. Now all my episodes are like 30 minutes long. So by the time I'm in the Book of Revelation, we're going to be getting like two hour long podcast episodes every single day. Some of you might like that, but I know my voice wouldn't like that.
So we're going to go ahead and just jump right in today. First uh, Corinthians 13, and I'm just going to read from verses one through six. Go ahead and grab your Bible and your cup of coffee or your cup of tea, whatever you prefer this morning, and I'll be reading out of the web. If I speak with the languages of men and of angels, but I don't have love, I have become a sounding brass
or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, to know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but don't have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but don't have love, it profits me nothing. Love is
patient and is kind. Love doesn't envy, love doesn't brag, is not proud, doesn't behave itself inappropriately, doesn't seek its own way, is not provoked, takes no account of evil, doesn't rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth.
You'll remember in the last chapter, we talked about the different spiritual gifts and how the uh, Corinthians were really placing an emphasis on the cooler spiritual gifts or the ones that they thought were more cool rather, which were the gifts of prophecy and also the gifts of tongues. So The uh, Corinthians, it sounds like, really
wanted the gift of tongues. In fact, in the next chapter, Paul goes into how disorderly the Corinthian church services were because they were placing such an emphasis on speaking in tongues. So at the very end of the last chapter, Paul talks about all the spiritual gifts. And then he says, but I'm going to actually show you something even better
than spiritual gifts. And that immediately moves us into First uh, Corinthians 13, where he says in verse one, if I speak with the languages of men and of angels, but I don't have love, I have become a sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. So Paul actually mentions here that angels have their own special language, which is kind of
interesting. And that is actually what many church denominations believe the gift of tongues is, is speaking in the angelic language, because you're like, speaking to god in this language that only he can understand, basically. But as Paul says here, it does have a broader sense. It's not just speaking to god in this angelic language, it's also speaking the languages of
us, of people. And I told a few stories back last week where people would go into these foreign countries not being able to speak their language, but then be given the supernatural power to be able to understand the language that the people are talking in and also be able to speak it themselves. And honestly, that's a very impressive spiritual gift. Like, how cool is that? Just being able to understand foreign languages and speak to god in a language that nobody can understand. That's a really
cool sounding spiritual gift. But Paul says, you know, if I speak every single language on earth, because I have the gift of tongues, and not only that, I also can speak the language of god if I don't have love, I am nothing more than an annoying sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And not like a nice sounding cymbal like one's in an orchestra, just symbols that, like, children use. When I was a little kid, I used to take, uh, two pot lids and slam them together like symbols because I
thought they were the same thing as symbols. And honestly, I don't know how my mom tolerated that, but she was fine with it. And, uh, that was the noise I would make. It was very annoying, I am sure, to everybody in the house when I would do that as a little kid. And that is what Paul is saying. Somebody who speaks in tongues is like if they don't actually have love for other people. And what is this love that Paul is
talking about? A lot of people would read this and think, oh, you know, kindness, generosity towards other people, you know, just being nice in general, just being kind. That's what a lot of people think this word love means. But this word love, if you go back to the Greek, has a far deeper meaning than just
kindness. The word love in Greek that is being used here is agape, uh, agape, uh, love means like a supernatural kind of love, a love that fully gives of yourself for somebody else, a sacrificial love, even if somebody else is treating you like absolute crap, loving them in spite of that. That is the kind of love Paul is talking about here. Not a sexual kind of love, not a familial kind of love, not even like a brotherly
sort of love. Agape love goes so much deeper than all three of those particular loves, which, by the way, the Greek language did have words for every single type of love. That's where we get the word erotic from, because it comes from the word eros in Greek, which just means sexual love. But agape love, once again, is that sacrificial love that god feels toward us. If we don't have that, Paul says we are
nothing. He says, if we have the gift of prophecy and we know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but I don't have love, I am
nothing. So Paul even goes so far to say that the gift of prophecy, even though it's cool and it's basically communicating with god and giving a word or a message from god to other people, even if we have that figured out, even if we understand all the mysteries of god and all the secrets of the Bible and every bit of theology, we just understand it. Even if we have every gift of wisdom, but we don't have love, we are
nothing. If we have all faith, so much faith in God that we can tell a mountain to remove itself and be thrown into the sea, but yet we don't have love, once again, we are nothing. So we can have every cool spiritual gift under the sun, we can have all of these impressive things that we do for people, but if we don't have love, we are nothing. Then Paul says, if I give away all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but I don't have love, it profits me
nothing. So we can self sacrifice to the point of giving everything that we have away to somebody who is poor, or selling everything we have and giving all of the money away to somebody who's poor, or even going to such great lengths to become A martyr and be burned at the stake. But yet if we don't have
love, none of those things profit us anything. But you wouldn't think that looking at those guys, like if you knew somebody who literally self sacrificed to the point of selling their beautiful million dollar home and gave every penny to a charity, you would think, wow, you know, that person is so loving, that person is so kind. Like they're willing to be impoverished to help the poor and to help the people who are impoverished. That's what you would
think. If you saw a martyr being burned at the stake while proclaiming Jesus, you would be like, oh my goodness, that man or that woman has so much faith. They must be way better than I am. But Paul says if they have no love for other people, doing those self sacrificial things actually means nothing. But why? Because agape love, the uh, definition of it is a self sacrificial love. But it has to be truly self sacrificial. It can't be self sacrificial
just to put on a show for other people. So for example, say I'm going every Tuesday to go work at my local food bank. You know, people would see that and they'd be like, oh, wow, you know, Jen, she volunteers her time. She really cares about the homeless people in her community. She's just a really nice
person, a very loving person. But in actuality, I'm just going to that food bank every single Tuesday to get praise from people and to get accolades and to make people think that I'm super righteous or super holy. Obviously God doesn't look, uh, very kindly at that. Paul says that that benefits us nothing. So I would literally be gaining nothing. My only reward would be a few people thinking that I am righteous for going and working at a food bank. That would be my only reward.
Paul says if we don't have love, we gain nothing. So now Paul really explains what love truly is, what this agape love really is. And this is the most famous portion of first uh, Corinthians for sure, possibly of the latter half of the New Testament. In fact, I have it on, I have it written on one of my wedding bands. Love is patient and is kind. Love doesn't envy. Love does not brag. It is not proud. So we'll start with that. That's verse four. Love is patient and is
kind. Okay, like Paul could stop there and uh, we still wouldn't be able to show agape love to people. Because man, when somebody comes up and irritates me, I lose patience very quickly. Love is kind. If you ever get insulted by somebody or mistreated by somebody, kindness is the last thing you want to feel. In fact, uh, a couple nights ago, my husband and I and a friend went to a concert together. And we went through the door, and it was like a bigger concert. So there was guards everywhere and
police. So we go through the door, and this guard started, like, yelling at my husband and I and my friend because we were going through the, um, like the gate too quickly because we had to go one by one so it could scan if we had any metal on us or something. It was like a metal detector. The guy started screaming. And I can tell you I did not feel kind in that moment. In fact, I kind of snapped back at him. That was not
me being loving. When that guard irritated me or was unkind to me, I should have responded with kindness instead of snapping back at him. So how many times do we fail at being loving? Just with those two alone, Being patient and kind. And this includes being patient and kind, not just externally, but also internally as well. Because what does Jesus say about the heart? That the heart is where all of the sin comes from. So if we are even thinking unkind thoughts about somebody that is
not being loving. But then, of course, Paul continues, it's not just patient and kind. This type of love, agape love, it also doesn't envy. This is something I deeply struggle with. I have been, um, a very envious person for much of my life. And I compare myself to other people all the time. And if I think that they have a better life than me or more blessings or more of this or more of that, I get very envious. One of the things I've been very envious of recently, not to air
all my dirty laundry here. Maybe I'll stop after this one. So you guys don't think that I'm, like, the worst person ever. I get very envious of people with babies because that is not a blessing that God has given me. But God did give them that blessing, and I should be happy for them and not be envious or jealous that they have something that I was not blessed with because I have other blessings that God gave me. And I'm not focusing on the good things
that God gave me. Instead, I'm focusing on what I don't have and what more God can do for me. Not to mention, envy is a very, very grave sin. Because envy often doesn't just stop at envy. It starts a whole snowball of other sins and can sometimes even lead to things like murder in the case of Cain and Abel, the very first murder that ever took place in Scripture took place between Adam and Eve's
children. Cain was very jealous and envious of his younger brother because his younger brother Abel was doing the right thing in front of God And so God uh, was commending Abel for doing the right thing, but Cain wasn't doing the right thing, and so he was envious and ended up killing his younger brother. And then, of course, in the case of Jesus, the Pharisees wanted to put Jesus to death because they were envious
of him. They were jealous. So jealousy is very much a lack of love, and it can lead to far greater feelings and far greater sins than just the initial feeling of envy or jealousy. Moving forward, love doesn't brag and is not proud. So both of those things have to do with our egos. Love won't cause us to magnify ourselves over other people. Instead, we will humble ourselves and actually prefer other people to ourselves and hope that they actually get elevated instead of us.
I'm reading a book right now called the Heart of the Artist, and I'm doing it with my youth worship team. And it's a fantastic book. But one of the things that the author said really stood out to me. He said, you will know how humble you really are when somebody treats you like a servant. If you get treated like a servant and you can't deal with that, then you are not really humble. So that's how you can know the difference between real humility and false humility.
But moving forward in verse five, love doesn't behave itself inappropriately. So in other words, love is not rude. In other words, you act appropriately when you are in somebody's house. You take your shoes off, you respect the rules of their house, and hopefully if somebody comes into your house, they will respect the rules of your house. You act appropriately to other people. You learn manners. You don't say snide remarks to people or crack crude jokes in
front of other people. In other words, love has manners and kindness. Love doesn't seek its own way. Now, this is a hard one. This is a hard one because we all want to seek our own way. We always are looking out for the interests of ourselves. But there's a verse in Philippians chapter two that says, don't just look out for your own self interests, but also pay attention to the
interests of other people. So say, you know, you and some friends are going to a movie, and your friends really want to see this movie, and you really want to see this movie. And you demand your own way, and your friends just give in to you, and you all go see that movie that you wanted to see. You are not acting in kindness because you weren't considering what your friends wanted to do in that moment. I, uh, watched a really ridiculously horrible video on YouTube that this one guy that I
follow turned into music. You know this, those things are like, people are screaming or freaking out, or like a dog is, like, doing something silly or something. And somebody who is a, uh, good musician will turn that video into music. It's pretty funny. I saw a video of a girl, like, freaking out, like, screaming at the top of her lungs in the car because she was hungry and she worked 10 hours and all she wanted was wing stop. And it's very possible that you saw that video as well,
because it did go viral. But how crazy was that woman? And she certainly was not acting in any way in agape love. Instead, she was demanding her own way, screaming at people and abusing people if she did not get her own way. So we have to be interested in what other people want to do as well, not just demanding what we want for ourselves all the time. Love is not provoked. And, man, this one hit me the hardest because I kind of always glossed over this one. Love is not provoked. But think about
what that means. Love is not provoked. There are so many times, myself included, where we assume that our anger is justified because somebody provoked us into that. For example, I have pretty bad road rage. I said I wasn't going to air all my dirty laundry, but I guess I will. I have pretty bad road rage. And something, uh, that helped me was actually getting a Bible explained bumper sticker on the back of my car. So if you want to get past your road rage, consider getting a Bible explained
bumper sticker available in the shop. Link in description. I did not mean to put an advertisement there, but it just went really well. I have pretty bad road rage, and that is me being provoked by another person. I am allowing them to provoke me. And, man, I mean, same goes for marriage relationships. How many times do we allow our
spouses to provoke us and then we get super angry at them. We're just like, well, you did it because, you know, my anger is justified because you provoked me to get to this level of psychotic anger. And how many times do we do that? But love is not provoked. In other words, being provoked is actually a sin because we're allowing our negative emotions to control us. We are not fighting them back. We are allowing them to be fed. But that Being said, of course, agape love will
also not provoke other people. So if you know your spouse's button, don't go press the button just to make them angry. It's just you're not going to provoke or be provoked. If you're truly acting in agape love now, you might be like, well, Jen, wasn't Jesus provoked? Wasn't he provoked to anger when he saw those money changers in the temple and he went in and drove them all out? When you are provoked, that means that you are allowing the negative anger
control you. In fact, I just quickly googled, define provoke, and it says, a, uh, deliberately make someone annoyed or angry, B, stimulate or give rise to a reaction or emotion, typically a strong or unwelcome one in someone, or to stimulate or incite someone to do or feel something, especially by arousing anger in them. So provoke is something so much deeper than just initially feeling anger. It's almost like feeding that anger to
make yourself enraged. Jesus was always in control of his emotions. And anger is an emotion. It's just an emotion. But anger is one that if we let it simmer and if we let it stay in ourselves without addressing it, it can grow into something so much more terrible. Similarly to envy, it grows into something worse. So you have to address those feelings of anger and not allow them to be provoked into something so much more. And then we have, Love
takes no account of evil. Now, what this means is that we forgive people even if they did something terrible to us. The love inside of us that God gives us this agape love will help us forgive and will help us move past. And then in the future, you will actually not even take into account the mean things that they did to you in the past. You just keep
forgiving them over and over and over again. If they keep on hurting you now, this doesn't mean that you be a doormat and you just let this person keep on, you know, walking all over you time and time again. Because even Jesus talks about that. He says, don't cast your pearls before swine. In other words, you don't give something nice to somebody who doesn't deserve it. You protect yourself and you take care of yourself, and you set healthy and godly boundaries with people.
But still you learn to forgive. When somebody does hurt you, Forgiveness almost feels like a punishment to us, right? Because why should we have to forgive when we're the ones who have been hurt? Shouldn't they come to us and ask for our forgiveness? Why do we have to give forgiveness
to these people? Who hurt us. Well, we give that forgiveness because not only is it good for us to forgive somebody, like, good for us mentally and physically, because we stop thinking about that person, we stop holding a grudge. They are no longer, uh, taking up space in our brain and living there rent free. It's actually good for us and healthy for us to forgive people, but also it's the loving thing to do as well. And if we are claiming to be Christians, then we have to
learn to forgive people. What does Jesus say? If somebody sins against you 70 times, seven times, forgive them every single time. And then, of course, what does the Lord's Prayer say? Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
So if we're going to emulate Christ and be a Christian, which literally means little Christ, then forgiveness is one of the things we have to learn how to do. Because Jesus forgave us for our sins even though we sinned against him and still continue to sin against him every single day, he forgives us every time. So because Jesus does that for us, we have to learn to do that for other people. And lastly, in verse six, love doesn't rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth.
So we can rejoice when we see truth winning. Right now on Fridays for the faithful members, I'm going through the Book of Psalms, and something that's really interesting about the Book of Psalms is that David is always asking god to basically destroy all the plans of his enemies, and we are allowed to rejoice when those enemies plans get destroyed. Now, there are other verses in Scripture, though, that say we shouldn't rejoice when the wicked people
fall under God's judgment. We should not rejoice over that because those are individual people. God doesn't enjoy it because those people were created in his image. He actually feels sadness when he enacts judgment against people. So because God is sad when he has to punish people, we should also not be rejoicing when we see the wicked people
individually being punished. But we can be very excited when we see evil intentions and wicked plans being destroyed because the truth then is winning out and those evil plans are not winning. So we can definitely be excited when we see truth winning, and we should be excited over that. So there's definitely a lot to digest in this chapter. And we only talked about half of it. So I'm going to talk about the other half on Thursday and I hope you join me then 6am or whenever you choose
to wake up and listen. But faithful listeners, have a fantastic and wonderful rest of your Tuesday. I will see you guys all tomorrow, hopefully for an episode from First Kings. Faithful listeners, happy listening and God bless.