Sermon Tone Analysis

I CORIN.

13:1‑13

 

           I.

The Priority Of Love

 

          II.

The Personality Of Love

 

         III.

The Permanency Of Love

                               

 

     I think you will agree with me that this is indeed one of the greatest chapters in all of the Bible, its language is sublime.  A.

T. Robertson, the great Greek scholar, said that this chapter comes as a sweet bell between the jangling noises of chapter 12 and 14.  Right in the midst of this discussion of the disorder, the confusion, the problems and the division they are experiencing in Corinth about the matter of spiritual gifts the apostle Paul devotes time to this beautiful, beautiful little chapter on love.

Now it is very important that we look at this love chapter in its context.

We must always study the Bible in its context.

Someone said text out of context is pretext, so you must always be sure that you know what's gone before a chapter and what is going to come after a chapter.

So in that connection it's important for us to notice verse 31 of the previous chapter.

In chapter 12 he has laid before us the matter of spiritual gifts, he has said that every believer has one or more spiritual gifts, that the Holy Spirit sovereignly chooses which gifts a believer is going to have, and then he says in verse 31, But covet (that is, desire) earnestly the best gifts: and yet I show unto you a more excellent way.

So in that context and in that atmosphere he moves to a discussion of love.

Now there are three categories I want you to jot down that will be very important to your understanding of this chapter and the whole area of spiritual gifts.

I want you to jot down the *GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT, GIFT OF THE SPIRIT *and *GRACES OF THE SPIRIT.

*Those three categories are vital to our understanding.

The gift of the Holy Spirit of course refers to the Holy Spirit himself.

The Bible says that when we repent of our sin and invite Jesus Christ into our heart as our personal Savior He comes into our life in the person of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is our Lord's ascension gift to His believing people.

When Jesus ascended back to heaven then Christ poured out the gift of the Holy Spirit on believers.

So there is the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit himself.

Then the Bible discusses the matter of the gifts of the Spirit, and we've been spending a little time talking about these different gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Three categories of the gifts of the Spirit: there are the speaking gifts, there are the serving gifts, and then there are the sign gifts.

So the gift of the Holy Spirit is the Spirit himself, the gifts of the Spirit are those grace gifts given by the Holy Spirit to individual believers for the purpose of ministry and service.

But also there is the matter of the graces of the Holy Spirit.

Now referring to the graces of the Holy Spirit I mean in particular the fruit of the Spirit as it is mentioned in Galatians chapter 5.

You will remember in that magnificent passage it says, The fruit of the Spirit is, and then he enumerates nine items beginning with love.

Those are the graces of the Holy Spirit.

The graces of the Holy Spirit enable us to function as believers and to exercise the gifts of the Spirit in the right atmosphere and with the right spirit.

Now that was at the root of the problem of believers in Corinth.

The Bible says they had all of the Spirit's gifts, all of the gifts of the Holy Spirit were in operation in the Corinthian church but there was an absence of the graces of the Spirit, there was no love in that congregation.

They were fighting and they were quarreling, they were disagreeing with one another, there was evidence of carnality and deep sin in their fellowship, and there was an absence of love, there was an absence of the graces of the Spirit in that fellowship.

That's why it is not an unrelated subject, right in the middle of the discussion on tongues, for Paul to give us this magnificent, beautiful subject, this beautiful chapter on the subject of love.

Now it's very difficult for us in our day to talk a great deal about love in Bible terms.

Love has been so abused in our day, the very usage of the word "love" has become such that it's hard for people to really understand what you mean when you talk about love 2in Bible terms.

We use the word "love" in so many interesting connections: I love peanut butter; I love my Honda.

We use the word in so many different kinds of ways.

And of course love is so often perverted in the minds of people today.

Several years ago I read about a man who blinded a young lady and then she turned around and married him.

What a strange conception that is of love.

Sometimes when people discuss the matter of love or sometimes when they say, I love you, what they really mean is, I love myself and I want to use you.

I'm not talking about that kind of love.

I am not talking about a perverted kind of love or a self-centered kind of love.

The love that Paul discusses and we're talking about tonight is a love that is supernatural in origin.

Now you will notice that as I read this chapter I changed the King James word "charity" and used the word "love".

It is the Greek word "agape", agape love.

There were several words for love that were found in the Greek language.

One of those was the word "eros", it was the word that made reference to sexual love, sensual love.

So polluted did that particular word become that it is never found in the fertile soil, the beautiful garden of scripture.

One of the words for love that was also found was the word to describe social love, it was the word "philos" from which we get the word "Philadelphia", it was a love that referred to affection between members of a family.

You do find that word in the New Testament.

But it seems as if the Holy Spirit coined a word to described the love that we're talking about tonight, it is the word "agape".

For instance in John 3:16 it says, For God so loved the world, it is the word "agape".

So Paul here is using that word "agape" love.

Now love in this sense is something that is impossible to produce from the human personality.

You and I are not capable of this kind of love.

That's why sometimes I say to a lost man, though he may love his wife and though he may love his family, when he comes to Jesus Christ he will be able to love them with a love that he has never known before.

I am referring to that supernatural love that is only given to a man by God himself.

Romans 5:5 Galatians 5:22 again, The fruit of the Spirit is love.

In John's gospel the Bible says we are taught of God to love one another.

So, you see, I am talking about a supernatural love, I am talking about a love that only comes into a life as a result of the new-birth experience.

That's the love that we must have and that is the atmosphere in which spiritual gifts must be exercised if they are to accomplish what God wants them to accomplish.

So let's look at this chapter around several main divisions.

In the opening three verses of this chapter he lays before us the *PRIORITY OF LOVE.

*Now he begins with a hypothetical situation and he basically, in the opening verse, points out to us that without love we are nothing but noise.

Do you see he begins the chapter by saying, Though I.

You could change the word "though" and just use the word "If".

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels.

And then in verse 2, If I have the gift.

He is using hypothetical situations.

Now what he's saying is that spiritual gifts without love amount to just so much noise.

Now he begins in verse 1 talking about though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels; that is, earthly eloquence or heavenly ecstasy.

Now what he's simply saying is, Though I am able to speak with human eloquence, though I am able to speak in such a way that people will be enthralled by what I say; or, he says, if I am able to speak the language of angels themselves.

Now the question arises, What is he referring to here?

Is there a kind of angelic language?

When you study the scriptures and the speaking of the angels every time in the Bible we have a record of the angels speaking they always spoke in a language that was understood by the people to whom they spoke.

There is no evidence that the angels ever spoke in a kind of unknown language.

What does the Bible teach about a prayer language?

There is no evidence, to my understanding, in scripture that there is a kind of prayer language that the Holy Spirit gives to believers.

There is no angelic language that God gives to believers.

And of course, you see, he's dealing with a hypothetical case here; he is just simply saying, Suppose I could speak with all human eloquence, suppose I could speak as if I were an angel myself.

His point is, If I don't have love it is just so much noise.

Now in the Corinthian city the mystery cults were very prominent and there was the worship of Dionysius, there was the worship of Cybele there, and the worship of those mystery cults was very ecstatic, they had ecstatic utterances, they had clanging cymbals, they had blaring trumpets, it was a very noisy, it was a very disorganized kind of thing.

But Paul says all of that without love amounts to nothing more than noise.

He said, I'm like a sounding brass, a noisy gong; I am like a tinkling cymbal, a clanging cymbal.

Now in there place a cymbal or a gong can have an appropriate purpose, but in and of themselves there's not a great deal of melody or music to a cymbal or to a gong.

I don't suppose any of you go into any of these record shops around here and say I'd like to have an hour CD of cymbal music, I'd like to have about an hour's worth of just pure old cymbal noise.

Because, you see, there's no melody there, there's nothing that moves the heart there, there's nothing that pleases the senses or appeals to the aesthetic nature of a man there.

So, you see, he's saying that's exactly the way we are.

It doesn't matter how eloquent you may be, if there's no love in your heart you don't communicate, you don't move the hearts of people.

Now of course there is tremendous power in language.

the book of Proverbs say life and death are in the power of the tongue.

Have you ever thought about that?

Life and death are in the power of the tongue.

Every time I think of that verse I am reminded of the career of Adolf Hitler.

He had to be one of the greatest public speakers in the world.

If you'll listen to some of the newsreels of his public speeches here was a man that was absolutely on fire with language, and by the means of words this mad man, this demonic man, Adolf Hitler, was able to take a nation of sophisticated, intellectual people and whip them up into a frenzy.

Indeed, ladies and gentlemen, life and death are in the power of the tongue.