Agape: Bears All Things

So we've gone through all these things. Love is long-suffering, it's patient, it's kind, it's not filled with envy, it's very humble. Agape is a very humble approach to life.

It's not selfish. We just scratched the surface of how selfish we are as human beings. And we went through all these things. It doesn't think evil, it's not violently angry, any time we have those problems, it's because we don't have this quality of God. Remember, Agape is the very character of God. It's who He is. And He says He is that, and He expects us to become that through His Spiritiness. So He says then in verse 7, Agape bears all things. It bears all things. It's an interesting word here in Greek because we're going to read in the same verse another word that's related but has a slightly different meaning. Here, the meaning is that you struggle. You carry the struggle. You get through the struggle. In fact, one place where it's translated in a different word, let's look at it, we'll come right back here, is in 1 Thessalonians 3 where Paul makes a very personal comment here and he's explaining how he's bearing up with something. So bearing is, you know, this is tough. You struggle.

It's hard. 1 Thessalonians 3 verse 1, he says, therefore when we could no longer endure it, that's that same Greek word, and he's talking about his companions that were with him because he was worrying about the church in Thessalonica. He was worried that they were turning away from the truth and he says, I was worried and I couldn't bear the worrying anymore. I was carrying it and carrying it and carrying it. We thought it would be good to be left in Athens alone and said, Timothy, our brother and minister of God and our fellow labor in the gospel of Christ, to establish you and encourage you concerning your faith. And he goes on and he explains, because I was afraid you were going to be shaken. And a little later, just a few verses later, he says once again, I just couldn't endure it. I had to do something. I was bearing this. I was carrying this. So agape has the ability or gives us the ability because agape comes from God, remember? You and I can't just work this up. Now we participate. We have to do things, but it is only through God's Spirit in us. And we talked about that in the very first sermon. It's only through God's Spirit because it is the mind of God that we're looking at here.

So, and by the way, if you understand what we've gone through, you have a biblical answer to the postmodern humanist, new age, Christian definition of love.

Because it's not that. What is commonly preached as love in the new Christianity that's just taking over Christianity today, even the Catholic Church, by the way, is facing a possible split with two popes, which has happened over and over in their history.

They're in a fight. I don't know who's going to win. Over? No. Love doesn't mean it's okay to have an abortion. Love doesn't mean it's okay to be homosexual. That's not what love in the Bible means. And of course, the current pope says, yes, it does. And there's bishops, there's cardinals, and there's priests saying no. So they're headed for a real interesting problem. Same thing's happening in Protestantism. In Protestantism, teachers, ministers who get up and say, that's not what the love of God is, are being kicked out of their denominations. The only answer to that is to understand what this means.

What Paul and John means when they use this word.

So we see he's enduring, and it's not easy. So when we have Agape, God gives us the presence of mind to endure insults and persecutions and difficulties, but it's a struggle. Now, back in 1 Corinthians, he says, after bears all things, it believes all things. Now this doesn't mean Agape is just, you know, I just believe everything I'm told. That's what that means. It means it believes the Word of God. Because remember, this is a relationship with God. Agape cannot, now we can have bits and pieces of it. I mean, a person without God's Spirit can have little bits and pieces of Agape. But to have Agape as your core character, your core being, can only be done through God because it's what God is. It is not what a human being naturally is. So we may have parts of it, but you can only have all of it with God. You can only have all of it with God in us.

So he believes all things. It believes the things of God. It hopes all things. Now this is real interesting. Agape produces hope. So we're going to have to talk about hope in a minute. And then he says, endures all things. They say, wait a minute, endures and bears. He's saying the same thing, but he's not. He's using a little different Greek word here. And it also can be translated, endure. It can be translated bears. But the difference with this Greek word is, is the meaning is, you do this courageously. You know, the first one is, you carry the load. The second one is, you carry the load with courage because that's what Agape does in you. It gives you the ability to have courage in the face of the things that come at you.

So we're beginning to understand, just from this verse alone, Agape isn't just about how I feel towards other people. See, that's how we define love. Although not really. You can love your cat. You can love your car, right? But we know that there's different meanings to that. When I say, I love my car, it doesn't mean the same thing as I love my wife. Unless, of course, you're Barry, it may mean that. But for the rest of us, Jamie, I just had to do that for you. Yeah, okay.

We understand that love has different meanings, but we don't define them. Agape needs definition to be a Christian. It can't be something we just say. We have to be able to define it. So here, we start to see how this is the mind of God in us and what it produces in us to be able to endure with courage, to be able to bear things, to be able to have hope, be able to have all these things. Then verse 9, for we know in part and we prophesy in part.

Prophecy here is meaning just inspired speaking. He says, we only know in part you and I, the more you study this Bible, the more you realize the depth of it.

I had a discussion this week with a friend of mine. He's an elder. He has cancer, and, you know, they don't know if he's going to live much longer. And we talked. We've talked for years on the phone because we're very good friends. And he said, how come it took me 40 years in the church to start figuring things out? He says, I've been studying agape, and I've been studying. He's named a few things he's been studying. He says, I'm just starting to figure it out. I said, because it takes that long to do it. That's why. It takes that long to really grow and understand.

Because we all, and what we do know is still only partly what God knows. He says in verse 10, well, I tell you what, let's skip down to verse 13, because I want to come back to verse 10. Verse 13, and now abide. These are the things that exist. These are the things that live on. Okay. Abide means to live. These are the things that continue to live.

Faith, obviously we need faith. Hope, love. These three, but the greatest of these is agape. Once again, you have to say agape because love, we will give a meaning to it that he does not mean.

How is that the greatest? In a way you say, well, that doesn't make sense. Well, actually, faith, love, and agape work together. And if you read Paul's writings, it's obvious to him. These three things work together in our relationship with God. Just like Sabbath-keeping works in our relationship with God, it's not just something we do to be good. It's part of our relationship with God. Or you'll give it up, right? If you just do the Sabbath because, well, I think I'm commanded to do it, I don't really want to, you'll give it up eventually. You do it because it's part of your relationship with God. Well, faith, hope, and agape are at the very core of who we are. So let's look at faith for a minute. Let's look at how they're connected to each other and why he would make that statement. Hebrews 11. Faith. Now, it's not going to be a sermon on faith. We're just going to look at one aspect. I mean, it is about faith, but it's only one aspect of faith. I mean, there's so much we could talk about here. Verse 1, the faith chapter, right? Now, faith is the supplement substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. I remember 30 years ago, reading that and saying, what in the world does that really mean? I mean, I mean, I understand it intellectually, but what does it really mean? And you see how it's translated in different translations, English translations, it can be translated. It's the realization of the confidence for things not seen. In other words, a total mental, emotional acceptance of something that you realize that you have total confidence in and you don't see it.

Faith is only, and you've heard me say this many times, it's only as real as what you have faith in, right? I have to laugh, my wife went for her yearly checkup to see her doctor, and I think at all the time she's gone to this doctor, there was only one medication that he gave her. She said, yeah, I'll take that because it made sense. She did her research. So yesterday she goes in, and I may have all the facts wrong or details wrong here, but he said something like, well, I'd ask if you want a flu shot, but you would say no. And I would ask, he said, you got this little health issue, if you would like to take this medicine, but I know that you would say no. So you're in good health, you know, we'll see you in a year. And, you know, she now she respects him, she listens to him, sometimes she does what he says, but sometimes she says no, because her faith isn't in him. He's a good doctor, but that's not where her faith lies. Her faith is in God. Her faith in him is only in, as a human being, a fallible human being, right? That's a difference. I mean, if your faith, I've seen people whose faith is in their own faith, right? I have faith. I have faith. With your faith is in your faith, then your faith is only as strong as you, because that's who you have faith in. Faith has to be in God, right? But you don't see him. And that's the point that I believe Paul wrote, Hebrews. That's the point Paul's making.

We have faith in God, but we don't see him. Now we see his attributes, we see what he does, but it's always something we don't see. I have, you know, you say, well, I have faith that God's going to take care of this situation, some health problem you have, or some financial problem you have, and you say, I have faith that God's going to take care of this. And he does. When it's done, your faith may be stronger, but you don't say, I have faith he's going to take care of this, because he already did. See, faith is before the fact. Faith is before you see it. Once you see it, you have it. God's given it to you. So faith is in the unseen God.

Now he goes on, he says in verse 3, skipping through here, because you're going to see the thread that I'm picking up in his writings here. By faith, we understand that the world were framed by the Word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. He says, you have faith that when you touch this, when you walk outside and you see trees, when you see each other, when you smell things and touch things and taste things and hear things, what is your faith? God made this, but you didn't see it. You weren't there.

So you have a faith in something not seen. Your faith is in, He did this. You know, I can have faith that this is solid. Well, actually, it's molecules and atoms that are moving very fast, but you know what I mean? For us, it's solid, right? I have faith in that.

But who made it? Well, I don't know some company. Who made the things they made it from?

God. When did you see that? See, I have faith someone made this, but I've never seen it. I didn't see it come off the assembly line. I know it, but I don't see God. I don't feel God, right?

God's never personally talked to me. I know He's worked in my mind, just like you know He's worked in your mind. God's done things, and you know it didn't come from you. You look at the Scripture, and you know this came from God, but you didn't see them write it. So you have faith in something that's not seen, and that's His argument here. You believe that God made the universe, but you didn't see Him do it, but you still know it's true.

You still know it's true. He goes on to verse 6, But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is the rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Okay? You believe that He is, even though you haven't seen Him, and you believe that He's going to reward you, and that reward is in the future. In fact, that's the whole point of Hebrews 11. The whole chapter is about a reward you don't receive until you're done. Christ comes back, and you believe that you haven't seen it, but you believe it. You know it. You live your life for that, because He is coming back, and God is going to reward me.

He's going to give me something. And if I go through trials now, and I go through difficulties now, I bear those. I endure those. I have hope in that, during those things. Why? I have faith, because I believe this is going to happen. To someone who doesn't have faith in God, that is stupid.

How can you believe that an unseen God, and you never saw Jesus, but you believe He existed? I mean, there's always some people the like to claim He never existed. I always find that an interesting argument. There's absolutely more proof that Jesus existed than Julius Caesar existed. There's more firsthand accounts, Jewish accounts, biblical accounts, Roman accounts.

Right? There's a few Roman accounts about Julius Caesar. Plato? How about Socrates? We have nothing written by Socrates. The only proof that we have that Socrates existed, and I believe he existed, I'm sure all of you believe he existed, is because Plato wrote about him. Of course, there's people that wonder, did Plato even exist? Well, there's more proof Jesus existed, by the way, than Plato, but that doesn't matter. I mean, I believe Plato existed. There's too much evidence.

The evidence that Jesus existed is not, you know, you say, well, He's unseen. Now, there's enough evidence. Now, the fact that He was the Son of God, that's faith. That's faith. We believe it. We don't see Him sitting at the right hand of God. We only have a description, but we believe He is there. That's faith.

That's faith. He goes on here and talks about Noah, how Noah had faith when the hadn't even rained yet. The man's building the biggest boat, probably, at that point in the history of humanity, where there was no water to float it. That's faith. Because He kept saying, the rains are coming. For 120 years, He told people the rains are coming. They, but this is the... people came probably from all over the world, the known world at the time, to come and say, look at the crazy man.

You know, I could see it was the modern times, there would be hot dog vendors and bands playing. I mean, it would be a giant party. Let's all come see the crazy man. But He said, no, it's going to rain. It's going to flood. But He didn't see it. Abraham, He goes on and talks about Abraham and Sarah. Abraham and Sarah believe that God was going to give them a land, and they left their country, and it says they went there and they didn't know where it was.

What if God said to you, I'm going to give you a huge piece of land and all kinds of wealth, but you have to go to Albania. You know, I'm saying, where is Albania? It'd take me a while to find it on a map, right? I know sort of where it is. Give me a map and I could figure it out fairly quickly, but He didn't have any maps. He had to go someplace, and when He got there, guess what? He never got the land. And His entire life, He never got the land. He waited for the future when He would get it in the future.

When His wife died, He had to go barter for a place to bury her with a man who owned a cave that God had given him, because it was all His land. But it wasn't His land. He never saw it as His land. He just wondered around in it. And that's why in verse 13 it says, These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, were assured of them, embraced them, and confessed that there were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. Because they saw a better place. But they didn't see it, except in their minds. That's faith. He never owned the land. And it goes through example after example here, where they waited. Their faith was in something that they did not see, but they believed God. And of course, we know what's interesting about so many of these people in this chapter. The Bible also contains all kinds of stories about when they failed, when they sinned, when they lost their faith for a while. There's all kinds of stories about these people for a reason, because they endured to the end. They made it to the end of their lives. And their reward is still out there waiting for them. Verse 32 then. Well, let's go to verse 39. I find these two verses here to be just an amazing statement because of what they encompass. And all these people in this chapter, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, not one person. And here he's talking about the Old Testament, but we can say the New Testament. Not one person has yet received the reward to promise, because it doesn't happen until Christ comes back. I mean, in their experience, they've received it and God's given it to them. But their trust is that it comes in the future. Then it says, God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us. In other words, nobody receives the promise of eternal life until Christ comes back, whether it's Abraham, whether it's Paul or Mary, or whether it's you and I today. We all receive it together. That's remarkable! That's absolutely remarkable! But we don't see it, do we? Because we're strangers on this earth. We haven't seen it. Faith is what you don't see, but you know it. You trust it. It's part of your core of your being. We know it. And we fail, and we fall, and agape, which is the love of God, keeps picking us up. It keeps pushing us forward. It keeps taking us through our own mistakes, our own problems. It pushes us through because that's the love of God in us.

Then he said, hope, right? Faith and hope. The Greek word, hope, is basically the same as the English word. It means a favorable and confident expectation. One Greek dictionary says it this way, the happy anticipation of good. Hope is, I feel good about this. So if I have faith in the unseen, what God's going to do in my life, even if I must endure and bear, right? But I still hope all things. I still hope all things. I still believe in my problems, in my stresses, and I have a happy expectation of something I do not see. You know, hope is interesting. Hope also requires that you do not see. Look at what Paul wrote in Romans. Romans chapter 8.

He says, verse 22, for we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth payings together until now. Not only that, but we also have the first fruits of the Spirit. Even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. He says, yes, we struggle because we're waiting for something. You know, you go buy a new car. Boy, you have excitement, anticipation, you hope. Two years ago, we bought a car, used car. I never bought a car on CarMax before. I always just, you know, went and drove a car and everything. It was like a whole new experience, and some people are telling me this is great, and other people say, oh, this is terrible, you know. So, well, I'm gonna do this, because it was cheaper than I could buy. At the time, there was a shortage of used cars, if you remember, real shortage of used cars, and used cars prices went up, and I found a car, and they said they checked everything, and you know, I went through all these things, and so I bought it. And I had this hope. I sure hope this shows up.

I just, because I paid cash for it, right, and I anticipated. And they told me when it would be there, and all, you know, it's like a certain time on Tuesday or whatever it was, and it's like Tuesday morning, I sure hope it shows up. Oh, one new car's gonna show up. We're talking about, do you think it's really the color of the pictures? I don't know. I hope it is. And it shows up, and they drive it off, and they do all these inspections and checks. They show me everything. They tell me, you got 30 days. And you don't like this car in 30 days? We send your money back, and you get it. It's just, you know, because you take it. So I did. I took it to a mechanic, and I hoped it was okay. And the mechanic did this, you know, hour check over the car and said, oh no, it's okay. And you know, we drove it home, and I'm hoping it lasts now for 170, 180,000 miles. I'm still hoping. But I don't hope to get the car anymore. I don't hope to receive it anymore. I'm not in anticipation of receiving it. I'm now just hoping that it lasts me until, you know, 170, 180,000 miles. You're always hoping in what you don't have. That's what Paul says here. He says, for we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope. For why does one still hope for what he sees? That if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance. Hope helps our faith. Because we're looking for something we don't see. But we anticipate it. Isn't that what the Feast of Tabernacles, well, that's what it's supposed to do. If you go to the Feast of Tabernacles, and it's just to have fun and eat really nice meals and have a little extra money, you might as well stay at home. Feast of Tabernacles is supposed to give us vision so we have faith and we have hope.

We hope for that time when Christ returns. All the Holy Days do that. All the Holy Days helps our faith and helps our hope. And so you really don't have this kind of hope without faith, and you don't have really faith without hope. They work together to create what God wants in us.

That's why we can't let this world discourage us, get us caught up in all the garbage and chaos of Satan's world, all the politics. Nobody's going to save this country. Nobody.

Only God can save this, and they're not going to turn to Him. The idea that somehow the United States can be saved, and that don't just mean spiritually because they're not going to turn to God, but somehow the system can be saved. That's a false hope because only God can fix this.

So, why is that sleeveless? Hopeless? No, because we're strangers on the earth.

And what is our faith in? If your faith is in, I mean, the U.S. Constitution, I think, is one of the most amazing documents ever created by human beings. I keep a copy in my... not a regional copy, I'm not that old, but I keep a copy of it in my study. And look through it. But it is not the Bible, and it is not where our faith can lie. We have a certain hope that it'll survive, a certain hope that it won't go totally bad. We have these hopes, but once again, that hope isn't based in faith. It's just sort of an emotion. The hope he's talking about here is a hope based on a reality of what we don't see, but we absolutely believe in. We absolutely believe in.

So, we have faith and hope and agape, and he puts them together. He puts them together. So, let's go back to a series of verses we looked at in the first sermon, 1 John. So, a year, about a year ago, a little less than a year ago, this is where we started. 1 John 4. I was talking to some people the other day. They said, I'm going to give a few more. I try to, about every three months, give a couple prophecy sermons. In fact, next time I come to Jackson, either next time or the time after that, I would like to do a couple prophecy sermons. And someone said, oh no, don't give any prophecies. And I said, why? They said, because after you give a prophecy sermon, now you never have any hope. I said, then you have your hope is in the wrong thing.

Your hope's in the wrong thing. Because things are going to happen whether you want them to happen or not. That's reality. Hope is, you know, if you understand God, today is a good day.

Right? You get up this morning and had a nice house. You ate your apartment or whatever. You ate a nice breakfast. You had a cup of coffee. If you're a coffee drinker, cup of tea or whatever. You got in a car and drove here. We're here together with brethren. We're not being persecuted. Today's a good day. Christians in history sometimes never experienced what you experienced today. There are times in history when Christians, you go back to the second and third centuries, and those who were Christians were persecuted, some of them, wherever they lived, and never ended their whole lives. And many of them died. You have a good day. You have a good life. And is it possible it's going to get worse? Yes. What's your hope in, then? What's your hope in? That you're going to get a raise every year that matches inflation? Good luck on that. Good luck on that. Your hope is in what God's going to do in your life every day because you're looking at something you can't see. When you get on your knees and you ask God to help you, you don't see him but you, when you connect with God, you know He's there. You know it. You don't always understand who He is because He's so much greater than us. But you know it. When you're in this word, you know it. And when you know it, you have faith and hope. 1 John 4, verse 7.

Now, this whole passage that I'm going to read here, this whole passage, every word that we see, love here, is a form of agape. Agapeo is, you know, it's verb or noun or whatever, but it's a form of agape. So that's important. What's being said here is, once again, just like Paul did, John's explaining what this really means. And that's, it's so important. The attack on Christianity today is about the meaning of love. That's part of the attack on Christianity. And we see it in the church. It's like, I've had this conversation many times, and I understand it. Well, my neighbors, my neighbors are, you know, a gay couple living together, and they're really good friends of ours. And we have dinner together quite often. They come over and visit the family quite often. We're just really close friends, and we let them know that we love them because we're Christians. Now, in principle, you do love them, right? I mean, I've known, I've had homosexuals that I've dealt with over the years, and treated them really nice. Because why? That's what this requires me to do.

But I'm gonna say, okay, let's become best friends because I love you.

Let's fill in there. What if your neighbor is a drug dealer and sells drugs to 12-year-olds, but he's a nice guy, and you like him, you talk to him. Are you gonna say, let's be best friends? Oh no! But because that's not the same. What if it's a pedophile? Oh yeah, my neighbor's a known pedophile, but you know, he's a nice guy. So he and I are becoming best friends.

Do you love him? You love him enough that his house is burning down. You're gonna go put up the fire, right? He's a mafia guy. Yeah, but well, he's my neighbor. I'll go help him put down the fire. Why? It says that. If your enemy does this to you, you do something good back. But would you say, I want to expose my children all the time to the mafiosos? Do I want to expose my children all the time to the pedophiles? Do I want to expose my children all the time to the LGBTQ? And the answer is no, no, yes. Why? Because we don't understand what love is. We can love them, but we can't become part of that. There are walls. There are barriers that keep us from getting close to certain people, and that's reality. That doesn't mean you don't treat them right. You do. Of one thing we've learned, you're not rude, right? And you love your enemy. You do good for your enemy. We've read all that. We know all that. Can I be best bosom buddies and go to parties with them? I mean, yeah, it's okay. You know, my kids are going to a party, and I know they're all going to get drunk, but that's their friends, and they love each other, so it's okay. See, you wouldn't use that logic in any other term, but that's what the twisting of agape has equaled.

We don't hate. We don't mistreat. We are kind. We help others. But there is a certain barrier we will not go beyond.

Why? Because God does that. Does God love the mafioso? You bet he does. Does he want him to repent? You bet he does. Is he going to give him an opportunity? Yes, he will.

And God says, if you don't repent, when your life is going to get really bad.

That's God. That's another subject. I didn't mean to get off into that.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves God is born of God and knows God. Okay. Agape, we are commanded to share that with each other. We're commanded to share that with the world. Yes. Because this is God. It comes from him. It's not something we can do on our own. We have bits and pieces on our own. You know, someone can have a certain quality of agape. You can't have this at your core because you can't bear all things and hope all things and adore all things. You can't have faith and hope that are connected together with this. So you might have a certain action or certain part of you that is agape, but you can't have all this package without God. And that's what he says. We do this because love is of God. Everyone who has agape is born of God. They have God's spirit and knows God. If we don't have this, we don't know God. And there's the problem. The modern Christian definitions of love is from people who do not know God. How can you kill human beings through abortion and say, Jesus supports that, and anyone who doesn't support that is not a Christian because they don't love. I've heard that. I saw that on a interview basically this week. I was watching something. They just said, Christians. Christians love. And this is the right of a woman, and it's her health. And I can't imagine Christians not wanting women to be healthy. That was the argument. Now, if I saw that person, would I yell at her, throw things at her? No. If I had a chance to say, I'd say, I'd do her, shake her hand. Right? But the bottom line is, I'm not going to just... She wants me to come over her house and discuss the Bible with her, but I'm not going to go over her house for a cocktail party. Right? Why? She doesn't know God, that's why. She doesn't know God. That's what this says. See, this is so different. It's almost offensive in our society to say things like this. Well, no, no, you can't mean that. Yes. That's what John said. He goes on, he says, He who does not love does not know God, for God is agape. And once again, everything here isn't the other words. It's not arrows. It's not the one about family love. It's none of those. It's the definition that Paul and John give to this word.

In this, the love of God was manifest toward us that God sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him. And this is love. Not that we love God, but he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sin, the substitute for us. And here's the point we keep going back to. We understand God's love. It is shown through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ because we are unacceptable to him. What? Yeah, the gospel message begins with, you are unacceptable to God in the state you're in. No wonder people really don't like the gospel.

No wonder Joel scene just wants to say, God loves you.

God wants to give you a good life.

And 20,000 people show up to watch him every Sunday. And tens and tens of thousands watch him on television. Why? Oh, good. God just accepts me the way I am. No, he does not. Or Christ didn't have to die. That's quite a price to pay, isn't it?

He says, if we understand the love of God, we start with that. We are unacceptable to God, and in order to make us acceptable to him, he paid a terrible price for us. That's agape.

The agape of love is what he was willing to do. It's what Jesus Christ was willing to do for you and me to become acceptable to God. That's the core of agape. Once we understand that, it changes everything. And that's what John says.

Beloved, if God loved us, we also ought to love one another. So if he did this for us, and we accept his love, sometimes we have not grown as Christians, and we're trapped in this belief that we are unworthy, that we're worthless, that God doesn't love me, because we haven't accepted this. We haven't accepted the gospel. We haven't accepted that he died for you. This is the price. This is agape. The price is, you are my enemy.

Paul says that. We were the enemies of God. You're my enemy, and I will die for you. You know, it's like people, you know, there's all kinds of stories of buddies that jump on the hand grenade to save their bodies, right? Have you ever read a story where you're being tortured by, the guy's being tortured, and someone throws a hand grenade in the room, and he jumps on the hand grenade to save his enemies? Never heard of that story before. That's the story of the gospel. I jump on the hand grenade for you, my enemy. You can't accept if you're stuck in that. It's because you haven't accepted he actually did that. It's a lack of faith. It's a lack of faith and understanding. Yes, he did that for me because God wants me. Even though I'm unacceptable in my state I'm in, he wants me that much that he's paid this price, therefore I will respond to him.

And he will now do with me what he is going to do.

And we hold that back because we just won't accept that. Well, I'm not worthy. Well, welcome to the club. I'm not good enough. Oh, when you figure out how to be good enough to earn that sacrifice, let me know because you're unique in history. You're the only person in history that became good enough. It's like when I'm good enough I'll be baptized, then you'll never be baptized. Because you know what baptism is all about? Accepting you're not good enough.

But I got past sins. Yeah, and he's taking care of those. I have present sins. Well, he's taking care of those too right now if you'll let him.

We just hold ourselves back because we don't believe this. We just don't get it. And we're holding ourselves back.

He says, no one has seen God. Oh, we're back. He's talking about agape. Is it? Well, we haven't seen the source of agape. Faith is what you don't see. Hope isn't what you don't see. Agape is, yeah, well, we don't see the source of agape. No one has seen God in any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us His Spirit. Tell you, there's a sermon right there in what it means to have God abide in you, what that actually means. That's a remarkable statement.

I don't know once again if we truly understand it, because not only does He abide in us, but we abide in Him, not with Him, in Him.

We'll talk about that some other time.

Let's go back now to 1 Corinthians and start winding this down so we can eat and then do the Bible study, right? Okay. I had a short Bible study last week in Nashville because, of course, Kim had been gone for almost two weeks, and I was feeding myself, and I could smell the food, and I said, that's it, folks, we're going to eat. So we had a short, short bus.

Verse 10. We skipped verse 10 because I want to come back to it here.

But when that which is perfect has come, the future that we have faith in, we have hope in, what? Faith, hope, and agape. That which, in part, will be done away. And then Paul adds that little personal touch to make his... He always does this, to make his point. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, and I understood as a child. I thought as a child. And when I became a man, I put away childish things. And now he's going to tie that into our relationship with God, our spiritual relationship with God. For now we see in a mirror dimly. But then, what will we see? Now, it's interesting here because I want to talk about this mirror. You know, faith isn't what you don't see. Hope isn't what you don't see. Agape, we don't see the source. We don't see the source of agape. And he says, but we do see something.

We do see something. For now we see. What is it we see then? We don't see God. We will. Dimly, but then face to face, now I know one part, but then I shall know, just as I am also known. In other words, I will know God. He knows me. He sees me. He hears me. I will actually know God. I will be able to experience His presence and the presence of Jesus Christ. I'll know what that feels like. I'll know what that is in my mind.

Through whatever spiritual eyes, you know, we'll actually see it, what we can't see with our physical eyes. I'll hear what I can't see with my physical ears.

He says, but I only see something dimly now. And that's what he ends up with. And now abide, faith, hope, and love, these three, but the greatest of these is love.

Okay, let's go to 2 Corinthians because here's where he uses this mirror analogy before. And when we usually talk about his mirror analogy, most of the time we hear it talked about, it's in 2 Corinthians chapter 3. 2 Corinthians chapter 3. But now let's look at it in the context of what he had written before. Verse 18. He's talking about how there was a veil in the temple. It kept the people out of the presence of God. Only the high priests could go in there once a year on the Day of Atonement. But we all, in the future, with unveiled face, okay, but it's not just the future. See, he's talking about a future time and now he makes it now, too. He makes it real right now. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

We hope in what we don't see. We have faith in what we don't see. Agape is from a source we don't see. But we see something and what is it we see? There's a spiritual mirror. It's in our minds that we are to look at and see Jesus Christ, not the image of Him as a man, but how He reflected the character and mind of God. And we're supposed to look at that and say, am I like that? But you do have something to see. Now, you're always short. You always find that you're not completely like that. It's like looking in a mirror. If you looked in a mirror and saw the perfect person, okay, I forget the name. There's an actor. Kim Thinks is the most best-looking man in the world. I don't remember his name. She probably doesn't remember now. She told me that years ago. I said, it's not me. I'm like a close second, but I'm not.

He played Thor. What's his name? Oh, yeah, all these women are shaking their heads.

She said, that's a good-looking man. I said, I don't know how to define a good-looking man. All dudes look the same to me, but you know, I have to admit, I can see where a woman would think that's a good-looking man. Okay, I get that. Dudes are dudes, man. I don't know what they see in us, but okay, I can see that. That's a little bit eye-candy there. I'm sorry. I just, I haven't seen her in a couple weeks, and I just love teasing her. I shouldn't do it in front of everybody, but yeah, I should. Anyways, no, I can't forget what we were just talking about. Okay, you're looking in the mirror, and I see him, okay? Christ. That's not really me. And then everyone else is like, oh, wait a minute. I am sort of like him, and I'm getting more like him, okay? I'm getting more like the perfect, the perfect spiritual man, Jesus Christ. We see that. We're actually supposed to be interacting with God's Spirit so that we have some little in-our-mind visualization. Because in the end, when you're there, you won't have faith anymore in Christ's return. You won't have hope anymore of being Spirit, because you'll be there. But guess what you will see?

You're a child of God. John said in 1 John, and we will see him as he is. He will be real. And what will you be? You will be a Gappe.

That's what we are going to be coming. Now, none of us reached that in this life. We just go through the stages. You're never really there till you're there, okay? We're never really there till we're there, but we're being changed and growing and being changed into that. That's what this is. And in our little minds, we think, I can't make it. And you know what? On your own, you can't. I can't. Nobody make it, because why? A Gappe can only come from God, and it can only happen with God's Spirit in you. But when it does, and we're there, and we will be changed. And that's why you keep the Ten Commandments, and that's why you love God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul and your neighbors yourself. That is why we keep the Holy Days. We do all those things to develop us into being a Gappe. So we won't be looking in a mirror anymore. We'll just look at each other and say, hey, we're all brothers and sisters of Christ. We're all of the same Father. We'll all be there, and it will be real. And that hope and that faith and a Gappe, the development of being there, it's all part of this process, and that's why they're together. And Paul said, a Gappe is the greatest only because that's what you are when you get there.

When you get there, you're a child of God in a literal sense.

We have to remember this and not let the world take us away from it.

The present definition of love that's in most of Christianity is a false non-biblical humanistic new age definition of love. It's based entirely on feelings. Now, love has feelings, and I understand human feelings, but you and I have been called to something greater.

God has feelings, not physical feelings, but He expresses Himself with feelings. Whatever our physical feelings we have are just a temporary, small physical way of experiencing something God does. We experience grief. He experiences grief, but it's not like ours. It must be much deeper because it's not dependent on chemicals. When He experiences joy, it's not like our joy. Ours is, you know, endorphins, right? And we have a chemical reaction. His has no chemical reaction. It's inherent to His being. That's what a Gappe is. It'll be inherent to our in our being. This is why I did 11 sermons on this subject, because this is what's going to have to carry us through. God carries us through because our faith isn't Him. Our faith isn't in faith. It's in Him because our hope is what? In Him. And it's based in what I don't see, but I believe it's there. And a Gappe is the purpose. Becoming the children of God is the purpose. Don't let anything hold you back from that. I don't care what your past is. I don't care what your present problems are. God said He will get us through that. You have to have the faith and the hope to do that and let Him develop in you the mind of Christ. Because He said He would do it. He said He will complete the work. Paul said that. He will complete the work. He started in you. And you have to believe it.