30 Days Of Community 1 Cor 13:4

welcome

Good morning and welcome to Journey Church. If you are new, thank you so much for worshiping with us this morning. We are here because we went to encounter God, engaged together and empower for change.

One last quick announcement is that the young adults group will be meeting at my house this Thursday at 6:30. Will be looking at the book of Ephesians. If you need the address, let me know.

We are starting our 30 Days of Community. We are calling it, the church a mosaic of love.

Craving Love

According to Billboard:

In 2023, love was the most prominent theme across Billboard's charts, appearing in 51% of Radio Songs, 48% of Streaming Songs, and 44% of Digital Song Sales.

According to a YouGov poll, about 70% of people in the United States enjoy rom-coms. Women are more likely to love or like rom-coms than men, and people under 45 are slightly more likely to love them than people 45 and older.

One study suggests:

Watching rom-coms can trigger nostalgic emotions and increase oxytocin levels, which is known as the love hormone.

What we inherently understand is that people want love, they want to experience love, and they want to be reminded of love.

What is love?

1 Corinthians 13:4–7 CSB

Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant, is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable, and does not keep a record of wrongs. Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

We have to keep in mind with all that we are talking about that we are talking about a biblical definition of love. We are looking at how the God of the Bible talks about love. This means there are going to be some things that are different than the way the culture, any culture, at any time defines it.

What is love?

We are talking about love and not just the love between a man and a woman. Not romantic love although it can be that. We are not just talking about friendship love. We are not even just talking no talking about familial love between a parent and a child or a child to a parent.

It would be like talking about a car. To talk about a specific type of car is a bit different than talking about what a car is.

We are talking about what love is. What we see is that love is focused outward. It has qualities and it is directional.

When we talk about love, the need for love, the craving to be loved, it is not just about these things, these attributes of love, but also its function.

This is why we are talking about love during our 30 Days of Community because it is so much bigger than just one area of life. Love is the bond of all our true relationships and community.

Love can be measured

I have said it before but it bears repeating. These qualities of love are meant to be lived, they are not just theoretical. So while we are not perfect, can we replace love with our name in these verses? When we do that do we find a lack that tells us we have been weighed and measured and found wanting? It also tells us some areas that we are doing ok in.

I am going to put these verses on the screen again, only I have removed love and put in the word “I”. I am going to give us a minute or two to read them to yourself and see how you feel.

I am patient, I am kind. I do not envy, I am not boastful, I am not arrogant, I am not rude, I am not self-seeking, I am not irritable, and I do not keep a record of wrongs. I find no joy in unrighteousness but I rejoice in the truth. I bear all things, I believe all things, I hope all things, I endure all things.

I find some areas that I am happy to say I do ok in. I am not sure about you, I find some lack. That is ok, we will always have lack here but that means we have opportunity to grow.

This can be used for others too. What if we are curious if someone else loves us? We can put there name in there. We can ask if they, imperfectly, love us.

This week we are going to focus in on verse 4.

Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant

Where does love come from?

When we talk about love we need to first understand that God is not just the author of love. He is not someone who created it and then sent it to us mere mortals.

1 John 4:16 CSB

And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.

God did not invent love, God is love. It is who He is. We being created in Him image were created in love and for love.

True, real, proper love is from God. This is why the totality and reality of love is so much bigger than just a romantic relationship.

God is love and to be made in His image means we have love within us.

God loves us, He calls us to himself and says go love like me.

Love without God

We have the ability to love apart from God, it is in our DNA. It is part of the fabric of what it means to be human. But because of corruption our love is imperfect. God’s love is perfect and ours has defects. When we come to Christ one of the amazing things that happens, is He restores our ability to love rightly.

I am not a calvinist but in the Reformed world there is the doctrine of total depravity. What that means is not that we are the worst possible versions of ourselves or that as Millard Erickson says,

Further, total depravity does not mean that the sinful person is as sinful as possible.

Millard J. Erickson

What total depravity means is that every area of our being is affected by the fall.

If we want to love on our own apart from God we can, but whatever we build we sustain. What God builds He sustains.

Love is Patient, Love is Kind

It is not coincident then, that the first two components of love are fruit of the Spirit.

The fruit of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self-control.

Love itself is a fruit of the Spirit and patiences and kindness are also parts of love. The interconnectedness is undeniable. Love, true love, pure love, exists in a higher dimension. It is like non-euclidean geometry. Real powerful, life changing love is a mobius strip. It is beyond what we can create ourselves. It is from, enriched, and sustained by the Spirit.

The patience, the kindness we know we need to love other people comes from the Spirit. It comes from God.

We know we need patience and kindness to love rightly. People can be difficult. I know this because I am a person and sometimes I am difficult.

We need God to give us love and sustain our ability to love.

Love is directional.

It has an object that it focuses on. When we love we are focusing that attention, that affection, that desire, that commitment to something. This requires patience. This requires kindness.

And these things have to come from the Spirit. We receive them and then pass them along.

Chip Ingram in his book on generosity talks about how he met a wealthy man who wanted Chip to give his money away for him. He gave him a check book with a monthly balance of $10k. Each month Chip was to give away the money. He was a conduit for the generosity the man had.

One of the things we can all learn from this is that the patience and kindness God gives us. The love that He showers on us is for us but also for us to give away.

We can be tempted to think that God has not blessed but He has.

Job 33:4 CSB

The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.

Take a deep breath, there is a gift from God.

When we come to Christ and He pours our His love on us. When He floods us with His love we receive so much and then we start to pour it out. We receive patience and kindness and then we are able to give it.

This is why we need the Holy Spirit and the fruit He produces in us. Then we can pour out even in the most difficult of situations.

He gives to us and then we pass that along.

Remember love is directional, and Godly love is sacrificial.

This requires that we receive his patience and kindness And not being envious, boastful or arrogant.

I can think of no better example of this than Jesus and Judas.

Jesus knew Judas would betray Him. He was not surprised. He was not caught off guard. He was not shocked when Judas did this.

John 6:64 CSB

But there are some among you who don’t believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning those who did not believe and the one who would betray him.)

Jesus knew this but because He is love, He knows love is directional, because He was filled with the Spirit, and because He had patience and kindness He was able to love the one who would betray Him.

Never forget at the last supper and at the foot washing, Judas was there too. He received the love of God just as much as Peter who would deny Jesus and just as much as John the beloved disciple.

We ask what would you do if you knew you were going to die? Jesus knew He was going to die and washed the feet of His betrayer.

What love is this that we can love the hardest, the worst, the most difficult person? It is only because of Jesus.

1 Corinthians 13:4 CSB

Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant,

Love is patient and kind and not looking out for its own.

It does not mean you have to put yourself in a situation that will hurt you but it could mean that.

Love is patient and kind because it is looking for ways to express itself in community.

We must always remember that perhaps to someone else we are their Extra Grace Required.

Love is patient and kind but it is also not envious, boastful, or self-seeking.

Love is not about getting but about giving. Because love is directional it is not looking for what it gets. It is looking for where it is going.

We have spoken before about an economy of grace and not an economy of exchange.

Love is looking for ways to express itself in community. It does not matter if that community is a marriage, children, parents, siblings, friends, coworkers, or church. Love is asking the question, “How can I be shown?”

That means it is not looking for what it can receive.

We receive the love from God. We receive acceptance, forgiveness, community, and fellowship with the trinity and then we give out what we receive so we do not have to be burdened with the question of what do I get out of it.

I want to close with a story and the band can come up.

It is not a story about romantic love but the type of love we are talking about. The love between two friends who did not care about what they were going to get but only the good of the other.

David and Jonathan were the best of friends and loved each other.

David was going to be the new king of Israel but Jonathan was next in line to be king. This did not matter to either of them.

Jonathan made a plan for David to hide and depending on how he shot the arrow it would tell David what he needed to know.

Was he safe or in trouble?

1 Samuel 20:14–17 NLT

And may you treat me with the faithful love of the Lord as long as I live. But if I die, treat my family with this faithful love, even when the Lord destroys all your enemies from the face of the earth.” So Jonathan made a solemn pact with David, saying, “May the Lord destroy all your enemies!” And Jonathan made David reaffirm his vow of friendship again, for Jonathan loved David as he loved himself.

Jonathan could have shot his arrow to kill but he chose to shoot it in love. He chose to express love to one who would get what he could have had.

This is love. This is what community is all about. This is why Journey exists. To receive the Lord’s faithful love and to express it for the good of others. 1 Cor 13:4

1 Corinthians 13:4 CSB

Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant,

If you have not received the Lord’s faithful love. His patience and kindness. If you have not received the Holy Spirit and allowed Him to produce this fruit in you then do not miss this opportunity. If you have been trying to build the whole thing yourself then feel free to stop right now and ask God to take over.

We also have these arrows up here. Little reminders that love is directional and we are called to shoot it well.