Okay everybody, I'd like to just say, as always, thank you for joining us here again at the Everlasting Truth broadcast, where we give you everlasting truth. for an ever changing world. And my, my, my, things certainly are changing all the time. I'm thankful we've got one thing that's solid and it's stable. You can build your life upon it and it won't shake out from underneath you. And that is God's word. God's character is revealed in this word and everything that's here, I believe without doubt that everything here is absolutely true. And I praise God that he's given us his holy word. And so, we're going to dive into that word today, and I'd like you to go to 1 Corinthians 13. If you joined us yesterday, you heard kind of a preamble to where we'll be now, and probably in the broadcast to come. I've got a lot of stuff I want to cover right here. This is going to be probably a couple broadcasts, I would imagine, to get through this deal, but I think it's absolutely necessary. If you're familiar with the scripture reference, or maybe where we were yesterday, 1 Corinthians chapter 13, then you know the subject. It is charity. Now, I'm going to use a couple words in the broadcast interchangeably, and those three words are charity, love, and agape, and here's why. because they mean the same thing. The Greek word that we find here for charity in 1 Corinthians 13 is the word agape. Agape is also more frequently translated into the English word love in your King James Bible. When the Bible said in John 3 16, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that is agape, the same Greek word as 1 Corinthians 13 referring to charity. And so these go interchangeably, so you'll hear me use those and reference them back and forth in different ways, but they're all referring to the same thing, love. And so, when we come to 1 Corinthians 13 with that understanding, I think we can begin to get a biblical definition on what love is. Now, I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on this part because we talked about it yesterday. We talked about the fact that, briefly, that God has commanded us to love. It is a core foundational principle to the child of God. Love is a part of the character of our God. Love is a part of the commands that our God has given us. Love is a part of the character that God forms inside of us when the Spirit of God lives in us. The Bible said in Galatians 5.22, but the fruit of the Spirit is love. And so, love is a foundational block in the life of the Christian. It was love that saved you and I. The Bible said, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. The Bible said in Romans 5, 8 that God commendeth his love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And so, Love is important. We're commanded to love God. We're commanded to love our neighbor. We're commanded to love the brethren. All these things. And we're commanded to do all that to the extent in which we actually love ourselves. And we talked about that yesterday, how it's natural that you love yourself. Nobody had to teach you to take care of yourself. I mean, they may have had to teach you how to take care of yourself, but that desire of, I want to do what's best for me, nobody had to tell you that. That was naturally there. You care about how you look. You care about how you feel. You care about all these things that concern you because you love you. And so Jesus never taught you how to love yourself. What Jesus says is, now I want you to take how you love yourself and I want you to do that for other people. The way you wake up in the morning and you have a desire to advance yourself, bless yourself, do good for yourself. He says that's how I want you to love other people. I want you to have that same kind of affection for your neighbor, which includes saved and lost people. I want you to have that kind of affection, number one, for God. But also, I want you to have that kind of love for the brethren. And so we're commanded to love. But I talked yesterday about how mixed up we've gotten in what the definition of love is and what love actually is. And so I'm thrilled to take some time out of 1 Corinthians 13 here and just look at, if you want to know if you're loving, If you want to know, hey, am I loving my spouse the way I should? Am I loving my children the way I should? Am I loving my God the way I should? Am I loving my Savior the way I should? Am I loving my church the way I should? The brethren? Am I loving like I should? Then you don't have to go any further, really, than 1 Corinthians 13. Take a good, deep, long dive and look into this chapter. And ask yourself, do my actions and does my character and does my love look like what this chapter says? Because if it doesn't, let me just bust your bubble. You're not loving. You may be doing some things that you could call affectionate. You might be caring in some ways. But you're not loving. Because love is defined by what God says it is. And in 1 Corinthians 13, God says what love is. And I just go ahead and tell you, you might want to buckle your seatbelt because you're probably going to be a little bit rattled and knocked off your high horse a little bit here because... This chapter is challenging, man. I mean, it is challenging. It really shows our selfishness and how difficult it is for you and I to love the way that we should. And so, come to it with that perspective, Lord. I'm probably wrong here, and I want you to change me, and I want you to help me. I want you to make me love, and here's the blessed part about it, is that if you find yourself not being loving, you don't have to stay that way, because the Spirit of God, if you are saved, lives inside of you, and He produces fruit in you, and that fruit is love in Galatians 5.22. So He can give you this love. He can shed this love abroad in your heart by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us, Romans 5.5 would say. Without further ado, I want us to go ahead and finally get in the chapter. I spent a whole day broadcast on it yesterday, just going through some of the workings of it before we got there. So, let's go ahead and get into the text. Take your King James Bible and look with me, please, at 1 Corinthians 13, verse 1. Let's read it. It says, though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity, I'm become a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains and have not charity, I am nothing. Verse three, and though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Verse four, charity, here's your definition of love, okay? Verse four, charity suffereth long. If you got some kind of affection for your spouse, for your family, for your church, for your God, and it's not long-suffering, it's not love. It's not charity. It's not agape. Because charity, by definition, according to 1 Corinthians 13, 4, suffers long. All right? And that same mentality applies for the rest of these characteristics and traits of love in the chapter. So, verse 4 again. Charity suffereth long, and is kind. Charity envieth not. Charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth. Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. And if you have your Bible in front of you and you're able to, you ought to circle those alls in verse 7. All things, over and over and over. You ought to circle that. That's of importance. We'll get to that later. Verse 8. Charity never faileth. Never. And so, God just gave you a very, very, very detailed definition of what love is. And our job is not to change that definition, but to find out how we measure up to it. And is this thing that we have in our life we call love, is it really love? Is it really charity? Is it really agape? Because by definition, if it doesn't meet this criteria, then it's not love. And so let's go ahead and start working through chapter 13. Not going to finish it today, highly doubt, but we'll start on it and we'll pick up as we go along. So chapter 13, verse number one tells us this. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity, agape, love, I am become a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. Now, what he's about to tell you in verse 1, 2, and 3 is the first thing about charity is that it is spiritually preeminent. There's nothing higher to gain in the Christian life than charity. And also at the same time, if you don't have charity at the foundation of everything you're doing. Charity is to be at the foundation and it is also the pinnacle. It is the bottom and it is also the top. And if you do anything without that, It's vain, and it's in nothing. And this is what he says in verse number one. He says, I can have all kinds of spiritual gifts. He said, I can speak with the tongues of men and of angels. Remember, we're in chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians. Chapter 12 and chapter 14 surrounding this chapter are all about spiritual gifts. And Paul talks about the gifts here in verse number one of chapter 13, where he says, if I speak with the tongues of men and the tongues of angels, He says, and yet I don't have charity, I don't have love, I don't have agape. He says, I am become a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. He said, you can be as spiritually gifted as you want to be. You can be the best preacher the world has ever seen and you can articulate the Word of God with such enthusiasm and ability and understanding and all those kind of things. And he said if you do all that without charity, he says you got nothing more than the ability to be a religious noisemaker. That's it. You are as sounding brass, as tinkling cymbals. You make some racket, you make some noise, but there's no meat, there's no ability, there's no depth, no power to what you're saying. And so, the thing you need to be concerned about ultimately in your Christian life is not even your gifting, and even preeminently to your calling, is your loving, because this is your character. This is who you are. This is what identifies you as a child of God. Jesus would say that, John 13, 35. And by this shall all men know that you're my disciples, that you love one another. And so these things are important that we make sure is there. Without it, all of our gifting is just religious noise making. Now, verse number two, look at what it says. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, And though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains and have not charity, I am nothing." Think about those words. Paul said, I am nothing without this. I'm a nobody. He says, I can have the ability to prophesy. He said, I can have the ability to know the mysteries in the spirit. I can have knowledge in the spirit. He says, I can have faith that'll move mountains and have all this spiritual deep stuff. And he said, at the end of the day, if I don't have charity, I am nothing. I'm a nobody. I might be a prophet, but I'm a nobody. I can move mountains, but I'm a nobody. I might can understand things in the spirit nobody else can understand and see things nobody else can see, but I'm a nobody. He said, charity is the chief thing. Verse number three. He said, and though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Now think about that. In verse number two, he said, I am nothing without charity. In verse number three, he said, I am profited nothing without charity. And consider what he just said there. He says, it is possible for me to give my body to be burned and to give all of my goods to feed the poor. Doesn't that sound like charity? I'm going to give this away to somebody. Paul's talking about doing that but he says in verse number three says if I do that and I have not charity It profiteth me nothing. You know what that concerns me about is that it is possible to give your goods to the poor and Not do it out of charity Love not be your ultimate motive And you do it for some other reason. You know, it's just like we have all these social media influencers today and these YouTube people and everything and, and, and they give to homeless people and they'll, they'll go hand out money, but only after they put their own face on the screen and show how kind and how nice they are and how they're helping other people. You want to know what that person's doing? Not having charity. They're doing it out of their own benefit. And you say, well, of course they love the other person. They wouldn't be giving it to them. No, they love themselves, and they're trying to make themselves look good, and so they give it to them. And Paul tells us right here very clearly, verse number three, it is possible to give all your goods to feed the poor and still not have charity. And so we need to be checking our motive behind our actions, making sure that our motive is love. If you want to do something for somebody, that's great. That's wonderful. You should do that. But why do you want to do it? Ask yourself, is my motive pure in this? Am I doing this for me? Am I doing this for them? Why am I doing this? You ought to ask yourself those kind of questions. And so verse number one through three basically serves to let you and I know that love, charity, agape, is spiritually preeminent. It is above your gifting. It is above your abilities. It is above your spiritual actions. It's above all that. And so, then we move on to verse number four. And this is where the rubber, I think, really starts meeting the road for many of us. Because it goes on to define what love is. And what I believe you're going to find is just like me, as you study through 1 Corinthians 13, you'll find that a lot of the stuff you've had for a long time that you've been calling love, really wasn't love. It really wasn't biblical, godly love. Let's look at what biblical godly love is. Number one, chapter 13, verse number four of 1 Corinthians tells us this, charity suffereth long. Now I want to spend a little bit of time on these, Lord willing, and we'll get through what we get through, and we'll not get through what we don't get through, and we'll do it at another broadcast. So this is probably going to get split up, but I just want you to think about this very quickly. Number one, how do I know if I'm loving? Am I being long-suffering? Am I suffering long? You say, what does it mean to be long-suffering? And I think we can sum it up in two ways. Long-suffering means you don't give up quickly. And long-suffering means you don't blow up quickly. I want you to think about that very quickly. Love, by definition, suffereth long, which means it doesn't give up quickly. Hey, when a couple gets together and they claim that they love one another, and they claim how much they care for each other, only to find out six months later they find things they don't like about each other, and they split, they part, they go separate ways. Do you know that that wasn't love? Because love, by definition, suffers long. And if the affection they had towards one another didn't suffer together for a long time, it wasn't love. Now, another thing about charity is that it's long-suffering, which means it doesn't blow up quickly. And this is what God has. God is not some egomaniac sitting up in heaven waiting on you to mess up so his temper can fume, smoke can come out of his head, and he can take you out. That's not who God is. The Bible says the Lord is long-suffering, he's slow to anger, he's patient, he's full of mercy. That means he doesn't blow up quickly. As a matter of fact, I want you to think about what God told Abraham in Genesis 15. In Genesis chapter number 12, God made the Abrahamic covenant with Abraham, told him he was going to give him the land of Canaan. But God said something in Genesis 15. He said, Abraham, there's something's got to happen first before I give you this land. He said, your seed is going to spend 400 years in a land that's not theirs. And what he was talking about was they're going to be in Egypt. They're going to be taken captive for 400 years before they can come get this land. And I want you to think about why it is. God says later in Genesis 15, he says, here's why they're going to go in Egypt for 400 years. He said, because the Amorites are living in that land right now that I'm going to give you. And he says, the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full. That means these Amorites were sinning against God, and as a judgment on them, God was going to take the land away from them and give it to Abraham and his descendants to bless the Jews. But think about this. God said 400 years from now, Their iniquity will be full. I will finally have had enough. And then, and only then, will I judge them for their sin, run them out of their land, and then you can have it. And that is the land we know as Israel today. And God gave that land as an everlasting covenant to Israel, gave it to Abraham and his descendants. But it was only after he had been long suffering with the inhabitants that had been there. That's just one instance. There's many other instances. God's been long suffering with sin since the beginning of time, but that's just an instance where God spent 400 years waiting, waiting and waiting on the sin of the Amorites to get better. And he knew it wouldn't. Because he told Abraham, he prophesied, hey, it's going to happen. They're going to be ran out. And yet he waited anyways, even as they sinned against him, even as they rebelled against him, he waited, he was long suffering. He didn't blow up quickly. Let me ask you, do you have that kind of love for your spouse? Could you take 400 years of neglect from your spouse? I don't know. You'd say, well, that's laughable preacher. Nobody's going to make it 400 years. Yeah, but love. Love is the subject, and that tells us something about love. It's long-suffering, it doesn't give up quickly. It doesn't blow up quickly. When a couple, and we've all been there, I myself have been there, when a couple blows up on one another, you know, just, and we've all been there, we know what it's like, it just takes one or two little comments, right? And then we lose our cool. Maybe it's just a bad day. Maybe there's been a history of contention going on the last couple of days and you're just at your wits end and just one little comment and boom, you're fired up. That's not being long suffering. And every action that you commit in that state of mind is not an action out of love. And if love is a command and you're failing to love, thereby you're sinning. When we're not being long-suffering, we are sinning because we're not loving, and love is what we've been commanded to do. And so, are we long-suffering? Not only that, but charity. Verse number four of 1 Corinthians 13 says, charity suffereth long. It says, and is kind. One way you know that you truly love your spouse, love your church, love your kids, is you're kind to them. You're kind to them. You know, When we're unkind to our spouse, our children, or anybody for that matter, we're not being loving. And I think what happens sometimes is we don't respond to our spouses, our children, whoever, out of kindness because we're afraid that kindness is going to be taken advantage of. We're going to be pushovers, we're going to be stepped on, we're going to be walked on. And so we don't respond with kindness and we don't respond with love. and because we're afraid of that happening. But let me just say this very quickly. You can be kind to somebody without being a pushover. The Lord is kind. That's a word that describes Him in the Old Testament. He says that He's kind. But God's not a pushover, is He? God is kind, He's patient, He's long-suffering, but He's not a pushover. One day judgment's coming. He's not a pushover. And so what that tells me is if you're afraid to be kind to your spouse, to your children, to whoever, because you're afraid they're going to walk over you, just understand kindness doesn't necessarily mean pushover. And it is possible to be kind without being a pushover. That's not an ultimatum that you have to choose between the two of them. But even if you did have to choose, The Bible tells you to love and then it says here's what love is. Love is being kind. And so there is no excuse when we're acting outside of kindness and we are being harsh with one another. We simply are not loving. I thought we would be further along than this today in the broadcast, but I'm glad we're taking our time. We're just piece by piece, and so we're going to hold up right here, and Lord willing, next week, we hope you'll come back, and we're going to dive into the rest of 1 Corinthians 13, Lord willing, and we're going to walk through a piece by piece description of charity, and we're going to find out, are we loving like we're supposed to love? And you don't have to wait on me. You can go ahead now and get in your Bible and start studying this thing out. Start praying about it. Say, God, is that me? Am I acting that way? But until then, we hope you'll stay faithful and you'll be with us next week. God bless you.