What's Love Got to Do With It
On off • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 7 viewsNotes
Transcript
Being the Church
Being the Church
Good morning
If you have you bibles turn to 1 Corinthians 13
There was a gentleman once that seriously looking for a church to join and serve.
3 times he went back
God- I have been trying for the years to get into that church also.
There is a huge difference between going to church and being the church.
Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.
-Billy Sunday
Being the Church
Being the Church
We are called to be the church, not just go through the motions.
This morning I want us to look at what it look like for us to be the church.
1 Cor 13 is such a well known passage, used in almost every wedding, both Christian and secular.
It has been called the love chapter or the love hymn.
But honestly that is out of context.
3 things to note before we dive in:
Whenever Jesus took on an issue or sin, it was always targeted at the heart of the issues. Not the letter of the law but the heart of the law. - Paul is about to do the same
This is not targeted toward a husband and wife or even brotherly love.
Paul was targeting the church. More precisely the church is Corinth.
3. Corinth had so many issues:
Division in the church, envying each others gifts, selfishness, impatience with each other especially in public settings, downright disgraceful behavior.
Paul had just addressed the idea of spiritual gifts in the church in chapter 12.
27 Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. 28 And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues. 29 Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30 Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? 31 But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.
With that in context, Paul is about to address the heart of what being the church is.
Paul answers “what does love have to with it?”
But before we do, let’s pray.
What's Love Got To Do With It?
Before we get into this please understand love is a word we throw around today
In the Greek the word used for love is very precise:
Storge - familial love - parent and children
Philia - love between friends, family, community
Eros - physical love, passionate
Agape - unconditional selfless love.
This is what Paul is talking about and it is crazy to think without Christ can love this way.
3 things I want you to see with this love in mind:
Love is enriching
1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is enriching
Without love these gifts are nothing.
Love is what gives it value
Love enriches everything it touches
19 We love because he first loved us.
2. Love is edifying
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant
5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
2. Love is edifying
Love builds up.
The gifts we have are used to build up the church and each other.
This means we put others first.
This was an ongoing theme with Paul:
3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
One commentator put it this way:
The Bible Exposition Commentary Chapter Ten: Be Wise about … the Church Body (1 Corinthians 12–13)
The Corinthians were impatient in the public meetings (
It forgives and moves on
Compare it to the fruit of the Spirit
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
Love release the power of the Holy Spirit in the church and us
3. Love is enduring.
8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.
12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
3. Love is enduring.
The gifts of prophecy, knowledge, and tongues will go away. (Prized) There will be no need,
WE all start as children but we all must grow up.
We will have serious concerns if our child never moved to solid food, never spoke or walk.
If you are not growing there is a problem.
If you are not closer to Christ this year than you were last year there is a problem.
We will spend the rest of our lives growing, and eternity learning more about God.
The greatest measure of our faith and maturity is how we love.
18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
Being the Church
Being the Church
The heart of all we are as people and a church is love.
We express our love towards God by loving each other and those outside these walls.
We love each other and those outside these walls by loving God.
We will never know and experience let alone share this unconditional love outside of Jesus.
For anyone here or watching I invite you to truly experience this amazing love by surrendering your life to Christ today.
For those of us who know and have known this love through Jesus here is the application:
Answer these 2 questions with action this week
How can I love and serve my church?
Learn your spiritual gifts and get involved in a ministry.
We need help in children's, students, ladies, or start something we don’t have. Help with the mowing, clean up and set up.
Choose one thing, pray for the church each day and freak out Joel next week asking where can you serve.
How can I love and serve my neighbor?
Go by and introduce your self and say hi.
Ask i f you can pray for anything.
Bring their trash can in, invite them to church one thing t. Do love your neighbor.
Being the Church
Being the Church
The Christian that is bound by his own horizon, the church that lives simply for itself, is bound to die a spiritual death and sink into stagnancy and corruption. We never can thank God enough for giving us not only a whole Gospel to believe, but a whole world to give it to.
-A.B. Simpson
How will you be the church this week? It starts with love. That’s what it’s got to do with it.
Let’s pray
