All right everybody, I'd like to just say thank you so much for joining us here yet again at the Everlasting Truth broadcast where we give you everlasting truth for an ever-changing world. My name is Caleb Osteen. I am the pastor of Calvary Baptist Church And the Lord has blessed me to have this ministry as well. And I hope that I can minister to you and be a help and a blessing to you. Before we get started, if my voice sounds a little bit different today, I've been getting over a little bit of sickness over the weekend, the last couple of days. So my voice is getting better, but it's not all the way there. But if I sound a little different, that's why. It's still me just overcoming some things physically there. Anyways, we started last week in a great subject, one that is monumental. It's very important, and it's the subject of love or charity, whatever you will, whichever way you want to call it. 1 Corinthians 13 uses the word charity, but we know that the Greek word behind charity is the Greek word agape, and agape is also more commonly translated as love in your King James Bible. For example, John 3.16, for God so agape owed the world. He so loved the world. He had charity for the world. And we know that in our language there's even significant meaning in English behind the word charity. We talked about how in the Greek there's a couple different kinds of Greek words for the English word love. We've got phileo, that's brotherly love. We've got agape, that's sacrificial love. We've got eros, which is like an erotic love that's sensual, similar to lust in a way. You've got storge love, and so that's familial love amongst family members. It's that natural affection such as one would have for their child. But the love that the Bible talks about of the Christian is agape love. Which is translated charity and agape love is sacrificial love and that's why when somebody gives money in our in our culture today they give to charity and what that means is they are sacrificing their own financial means for somebody else and what God calls us to is is a life of sacrificing for other people because that's what Christ did for us as he sacrificed. So we need to understand that is the chief foundational element of love. It is sacrifice. It is giving, giving something up. We know that God loved the world and he gave his only begotten son. We know Romans 5, 8, but God committed his love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. It was that love, that giving of his life that showed that love. And so you cannot love essentially without sacrifice. The Bible said in Ephesians 5 25, husbands love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it. And so the husband is called to give himself away to his wife. And that's why so many marriages fail when a husband decides to give himself to his hobby and a husband decides to give himself to his buddies and he spends more time with his buddies and his friends and his co-workers than he does his wife and his children. There's something wrong with that. He's sacrificing the wrong things. He's giving himself to the wrong things. God said he's to love his wife. And so, we come to this passage with the understanding that it's talking about sacrifice. And then, as we come to 1 Corinthians 13, which is our passage we're dealing with right now, it begins to give us a biblical definition of what love actually is. And Of course the world has absolutely martyred the definition of love. People think of love as some warm fuzzy feeling and I don't want to recap too much but we debunked that in the last couple of broadcasts on the subject because if love was some warm fuzzy feeling then that would mean that Jesus didn't love you as he was sweating drops of blood and crying unto the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane when he did not just want to go to the cross. He said initially, he said, Father, he said, if it be thy will, let this cup pass from me. He didn't have some warm, fuzzy feeling of excitement and fervor of, I'm looking forward to this. But we know that his love is exemplified in the fact that even when that warm, fuzzy feeling wasn't there, he went through out of commitment to you and I. And that's essentially what love is. Love is a sacrificial commitment even when the feeling is not present. And our world has just absolutely butchered that, and we have made love out to be all about feeling. And that's just not so biblically. And so the Bible defines love for us, and I'm glad that it does, because the Bible is what teaches me how to love my wife. And I'm still working on it. I'm not perfect. But if I did what the world told me to do, I wouldn't love my wife. Because what the world says love is, is not what this passage defines. And so you need to see how do I stack up against 1 Corinthians 13 and my love for others, my love for my spouse, my love for my children, my love for my church family, my love for the lost, my love for God, all these things. We need to see if our love looks like 1 Corinthians 13. So we already started on 1 Corinthians 13. We got down about halfway through verse 4. We're going to pick up there today and see how much more of it we can make it through in a broadcast time. But measure yourself up to this and ask yourself, am I living up to love? Am I living up to what God says love should be? Let's read the text. 1 Corinthians chapter number 13, and we'll begin in verse number 1. The Bible says, Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity, I am become as 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'm nothing. 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. 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. Charity never faileth. But whether there be prophecies, they shall fail. Whether there be tongues, they shall cease. Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away." And we'll just hold up right there This chapter is stuck right in the middle, contextually, of Paul's discourse on spiritual gifts. If you started in chapter number 12, you would find talking about the gifts. In chapter number 14, Paul talking about the gifts, and he takes a break Well, not a break, but he takes a different perspective in chapter 13, and he talks about the preeminence of the gift of love. And he says, listen, prophecy is a great gift. Tongues is a great gift. All that's wonderful. He says, but if you don't have charity, he says it means nothing. And so this is the preeminent thing that the believer is to pursue. Above any spiritual gifting, you're to pursue charity. You're to ask yourself, Are you loving? If you're a preacher, before you assess your ability to be a good preacher and preach a good sermon, you need to assess your character and your love for other people. That's the chief thing here. And Paul takes this chapter and emphasizes that amongst his discourse on spiritual gifts. But that being said, In verse number four, Paul started laying out an actual definition of what charity is, and he started off by chapter 13, verse 4, saying, charity suffereth long. And we dealt with that last broadcast, so we're not going to do that again. But he goes on in verse number 4, and he says, charity is kind. And we talked about that already. But we're going to come midway, verse number 4, and this is where we're going to pick up where we left off. Verse number four, charity suffereth long and is kind. And here's the next qualification. If it's charity, it says charity envieth not. If something is going to be charity, if something's going to be love, then it's not going to envy. If you have a relationship full of envy, then it's not a relationship of love. If you've got an envious perspective towards somebody, then you don't have a loving perspective, because by definition, God said charity envies not. It doesn't do that. Charity doesn't get jealous when you see somebody doing better than you. You know, a lot of marriages function in a, what I would call a tit for tat mentality. And what I mean by that is maybe one spouse buys something that caters to their desires and the other spouse says, Oh, well, I can't let you get ahead of me. So if you bought something for you, then that means I had to buy something for me. And it's this. almost campaigning and championing for who can get the most possessions. And there's this idea of, I can't allow you to have more than me, and so I have to get something every time you get something. It's almost the way that siblings fight. When one gets a toy, another one has to get a toy. And it's a sign of immaturity. But a lot of relationships are that way. They look at the other person and they get jealous when they see them receive something that they don't have, and so then they have to rise to that. And we have these things happening in marriages, but we still every night would say to our spouse, I love you. But you know, truth be told, the Bible says if you're envious of that individual, then you don't really love them. Not from a biblical definition. It doesn't mean you can't love them, but it means in that moment in which you are envying them, You don't love them. As a whole, you may, but when you're acting out of envy, no, you're not loving them in that moment. Charity looks at someone excelling and it's glad to see them doing well. And this is something that's got increasingly hard in our society. It's difficult to look at somebody doing better than you and be grateful for it. Because we've been raised with such a competitive mentality that we have to outdo somebody else. But by definition, love won't let you have that perspective. And that's why a lot of marriages fail, because they're not full of love. Because they're full of somebody trying to outdo the other person. Jealousy over seeing somebody get something that you don't have is not love. Now, I found this interesting. I was studying the word envy, and when you look up definitions in your Bible, if you've got a dictionary, let me just give you a hint. It helps to go back and look at older dictionaries because words have changed over time and their meaning has changed over time. For example, your King James Bible was written in 1611. There are words used in your Bible that had a certain meaning in 1611 that in some ways now in a contemporary English setting have veered off. So if you read a contemporary dictionary, you may get a different understanding. So I like to go to an older dictionary. I like the Noah Webster 1828. It's still quite a bit down the line from 1611, but it preserves a lot of the meaning of the words when we're studying them out. And Noah Webster in 1828 had an interesting definition. that really rattled me. So I want you to hear this. He defined envy as this, to feel uneasiness, mortification, or discontentment at the sight of superior excellence, reputation, or happiness enjoyed by another. Have you ever got around somebody who was better than you at something and you felt uneasy? a conflict began to rise in you and a sort of competing rose up in you because you immediately were threatened in your value and your worth by this person's superiority. And so without anybody else seeing it outwardly inside, you're already kind of nervous. You're already uneasy. You're already discontent with yourself. According to Noah Webster, that original feeling rising up inside of you in and of itself is envy. It's envy, the uneasiness you feel when you get around somebody that's superior to you in any way, shape, or form. And let me say this, you're going to be superior to other people in certain areas, but everybody is going to be superior to you in other areas. You're not going to be the best at everything. There's some things that you're going to get around other people, and you're just going to have to accept the fact they're better than me at this. And love, when it meets somebody like that, it doesn't get jealous at them for it and get uneasy. It simply is grateful for the benefit the other person has, for the gifting the other person has. It's glad for them. That's what charity in and of itself is. It's glad when other people are doing well. He also defined it as this, Webster did, he said envy was to fret or grieve oneself at the real or supposed superiority of another and to hate him on that account. So what he basically told us in those two definitions was anytime you have that internal conflict, and you know what I'm talking about, that internal unsettledness that rises up in you when you meet somebody who's better than you at something, that's envy. And by definition, God said, charity envieth not. So in that moment, you're not loving that person. You're not, because if you love them, you would be grateful for the gifting that's on their life that God has given them. Charity looks at the other person's wellbeing, not the wellbeing of self. Charity dies to self so that others can thrive. So if we're upset when others are thriving, then guess what? We're not being charitable. So, I want you to think about something. There's a couple examples in the Bible I thought of that deal with envy, and they're not loving example. I want you to think of Saul's envy of David. And you can find an account of this briefly in 1 Samuel, chapter number 18. And I want to read this to you, and I want you to hear this very quickly. What a good case of envy and jealousy this is. If you want to study what jealousy will do to you, this is a good chapter to study out. 1 Samuel, chapter number 18. Bear with me, I'm having to flip my Bible open here. Verse number 1, David has just slain Goliath in chapter 17. Chapter 18 opens up and Saul is grateful for David's ability to kill the giant that nobody else could kill. And so at this point, Saul's pleased with him. And I want you to see this 1st Samuel 18 1 it says and it came to pass when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. And Saul took him that day and would let him go no more home to his father's house. So David defeated Goliath, the giant that Saul could find nobody else to slay. David slays him and Saul is thrilled about this so much that he won't let David out of his sight. He won't even let him go home. And Saul is loving David because David has done something for him. And you know, it's easy to love somebody when they're doing something for you. But this love he has for David is not really love. Because he liked David while David could do something for him, but he's going to have a problem with David when David begins to outdo him. And we see that in the passage as we read on. Let's go on a little bit more. Verse number 5, So far, Saul is still fine with David because David's doing something for him. But we're going to find in verse number 6 and 7, when David begins to outdo Saul, Saul gets jealous. Verse 6, And it came to pass, as they came, when David was returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, that the women came out of all cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet King Saul with tabrets, with joy, and with instruments of music. And I want you to listen to the song they sang. Verse 7, And the women answered one another as they played, and said, Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands. They said, you know, Saul's a good warrior, but David's better. Saul has got some victories, but David's got more. And this is going to really bother Saul. So Saul was fine with David when David was doing something for him. But now that David is outdoing him, look at his response. Look with me at verse number eight. And Saul was very wroth. And the saying displeased him. And he said, they have ascribed unto David ten thousands. And to me, they have ascribed but thousands. And what can he have more but the kingdom? And then from this point on, Saul's going to become the enemy of David. And so envy by definition arises when somebody begins to outdo us. And a lot of times we claim that we love people because they can do something for us, but let me ask you this, would you still love them if they began to outdo you? What if they began to steal some of your shine? And if your perception towards them would change at that point, let me just say this, God is challenging you in the area of love, because you're not really loving that person, because charity envieth not. Now, verse number 8. We just read verse number 8. I'm sorry. It says in verse 9, And Saul eyed David from that day and forward. And then go down to verse 12 and look what it says. It says, And Saul was afraid of David, because the Lord was with him and was departed from Saul. Down to verse number 15. Wherefore, when Saul that he behaved himself very wisely, he was afraid of him. Envy is when you get afraid of somebody else's superiority. And so we find Saul as an example of envy against David. And it's clear he doesn't love David here. He loves himself, which by definition is not charity. How about Joseph's brothers and their envy of Joseph? That's a good example of jealousy. Whenever they got envious of Joseph and they dropped him down in a pit, were they loving him? Absolutely not. Because love, by definition, doesn't envy. And it was envy that caused them to do that. How about Mark chapter 15 and verse number 10? We find that the chief priests were envious of Jesus. What are they going to do because of it? Mark 15 10. For he knew that the chief priests had delivered him for envy. He's standing before Pilate about to be crucified because somebody is jealous of him. Those chief priests did not love Jesus. And it's clear in their envy of him. And let me go a step further. When envy is involved, there can be no charity. Because envy ultimately will lead to the harm of the person that you're envying. Ultimately, in every one of those accounts, Saul is envious of David. So what does he do? Eventually, he tries to kill him multiple times by stabbing him with a javelin. Joseph's brothers try to kill Joseph by dropping him off in a pit because they're jealous of him. The chief priests deliver Jesus to be crucified because they're envious of him in Mark 15 10 So envy will always lead to the destroying of the person who you are envious of that's why you got to eradicate it because it will make you hurt the people around you you take somebody you're jealous of and Eventually, you're gonna come for them because your flesh will only be belittled for so long before it has to retaliate The only thing you can do is love And love will take care of that envy, because Romans 13 10 says this, love worketh no ill to his neighbor. So if Saul would have loved David, he would have worked no ill to David. He would have tried to thrust him with a javelin. Same for Joseph's brothers, same for Jesus and the chief priests. Envy is not love by definition, because envy always sets out to destroy the other person eventually. And love in and of itself, God said in Romans 13 10, worketh no ill to his neighbor. Anything that makes you act wrongfully towards somebody, harmfully, degradingly towards somebody is not love. If it makes you act ill towards them, it's not charity. because love worketh no ill to his neighbor." Now, we've got a lot more to say here out of this chapter. We just covered one characteristic of love. There are still a great deal of them left. I'm taking my time on this because I really want to challenge our perception of love because I think we've got it wrong in a lot of ways. This has challenged me and I believe it'll continue to challenge me and I think it'll challenge you and so I hope you'll keep tuning in. Come back tomorrow and God willing we will be back here in this again picking up in the next thing that he gives us so we can find out if we're living up to love. We'll see you tomorrow. God bless you.