Listen to 2010 version of the 8 part Agape Love sermon series:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8

[Gary Petty] Sometimes, you know, when we think about music, we think about praising God in the lyrics, and there's a time you just praise God with the music. And music itself is a form of communication, is what it is. So, appreciate that very much.

One of the most quoted parables, and one that everybody here knows, and probably many of the children know, is what we call the parable of the Good Samaritan. Let's go to Luke chapter10, review this parable that we all know by heart. But I wanna use it as a launch pad into what I wanna talk about here this morning. Luke chapter 10, starting at verse 37. Of course, you know, we talk about the Good Samaritan. Most people don't even know what a Samaritan is. But this is what this is called, because there's a person in this parable that's only known as the Samaritan. Luke 10:30.

Now, you have to understand what sets this up. What sets this up is that Jesus is confronted by a lawyer and asks Him questions. And Jesus says that the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your might, and to love your neighbor as yourself. Verse 29 is very important in understanding why Jesus tells this parable. But He, talking with a lawyer, "Wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, 'Who is my neighbor?'" In other words, he had a viewpoint of what loving God with all your heart meant, and he had a viewpoint of what loving your neighbor meant.

And wanting to be secure in his own viewpoint of what that meant, in other words, this is what justifying yourself is. In other words, justification is you are secure in your viewpoint as being right. And so you can defend it. You're gonna defend your viewpoint. Wanting to defend his viewpoint and being secure in his viewpoint, he asked, "Okay, well, who is my neighbor? Do you mean like people who worship idols? Do you mean like Roman legionnaires who have occupied our country and are persecuting the people of God? You know, do you mean some of these wild Arab tribes?" Which at this time were still living in the desert, nomadic tribes that were raiders and would come in and raid a village. "I mean, who is it here? Do you mean the Greeks? Who is my neighbor?"

And this is what Jesus says in verse 30. "A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. By chance, a certain priest came down the road and he saw him and he passed by on the other side." Now, let's stop here and say, "Okay, the priest." He said, "Oh, well, that just shows how egotistical the priest was." But let's stop for a minute and say, "Okay, who is a priest?" A priest is a person who is ordained by God to carry out ceremonies within the temple.

You know, if he would have gone and touched this person, interact with this person, he actually may have been by law ceremonially unclean and not able to fulfill what he was supposed to do in the temple that day. So, he may have had, if he would have sat down and been able to justify his position, that would have made sense. "Oh, of course, I couldn't do that. If I would have done that, I couldn't have gone into the temple that day. It was my turn to maybe carry the golden censer, and I wouldn't have been able to do it because I had touched this unclean person and it just wouldn't let me do it."

And his justification might have seemed to make a lot of sense. He says then, verse 32, "Likewise, a Levite, when he arrived at the place, came and looked and passed by on the other side." You know, the Levite might have said, "Wait a minute. You know what? Here's a person who's a derelict, you know, on the side of the street, doesn't hold down a job. This person deserves what they get." And this Levite might have given a argument and might have quoted from the Bible and would have seemed justified in his actions.

But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. So he went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring out oil and wine. And he set on him his own animal and brought him into an inn and took care of him. And the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said to him, "Take care of him. Whatever more you spend, I will come, I will repay you." So which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves? And the lawyer said, "He who showed mercy on him." Then Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."

Now, the good guy in this story is a Samaritan. A Samaritan was a person. And the Samaritans were a group of people, they weren't Israelite, although they had married into Israelites. They were people that when the Babylonians had taken...or I'm sorry, when the Assyrians had taken people out of the northern tribes and took them into captivity, they brought other people back in. And they became known as the Samaritans because the capital of the northern 10 tribes was Samaria. And if you go back and read about them, what they were were people who worshiped God, Yahweh, but they also worshiped the gods of the countries they came from. Many of them were Babylonians.

And so what you have is a group of people who worship God and other gods. Remember Simon Magus in Acts chapter 8 was a Samaritan who was a magician. He participated in the black arts of magic. He was influenced by demons. So the hero here is a person that isn't even half Christian or half Jewish. This is before Christianity. He's not even half a worshiper of God. He's taken the worship of God and done exactly what God told them they could not do. And he is the good guy.

This would be like me telling you a story, and I go through and say, "And here's a minister, a Christian minister who does this. And here's a leader in the Christian community who does this." And the good person in the story, he's Muslim. He believes in Jesus, but he doesn't believe he's divine, so he's sort of half. You know, he's not really Christian. And I make him the hero of the story. This is what Jesus did. And there's a purpose and a reason. And the reason why is go and do likewise. He's talking about the acts of kindness that He did. And His argument is if I can take a bad person and show where they did proper acts of kindness, how much should you do acts of kindness no matter who it is that you do the acts of kindness for?

Last week, we started, or two weeks ago, because last week I was up in Waco, but we started a series of sermons on the preeminence of agape, and how as we learn the law of God, and as we learn to do what God wants us to do, and we keep the Ten Commandments, and we learn not to use His name in vain, and we learn to keep the Sabbath, and we learn not to steal, and we learn not to lie, that those steps are the beginning steps of Christianity. That's not all there is to this. We must literally become Christ-like, and God is agape. And I went through and showed how the word is used in Greek, in ancient Greek, showed how it's used in the Bible, and how it's important to understand that agape isn't brotherly love. Agape isn't the love that a husband and wife have for each other. Agape isn't the love you have for your children. Those are all different Greek words. Agape is the love of God, and that we must have the love of God developed in us if we are going to truly be Christians.

So let's go where we started, 1 Corinthians 13, or actually where we ended up last time. 1 Corinthians chapter 13, because Luke 10 launches us into the next section of what agape is. Remember, agape is...is it just a feeling? We can't confuse that. I went through Webster's Dictionary and its definition of love, and I went through a Greek dictionary definition of agape. And they are not the same. They don't mean the same thing. So when we say the word love in English, we are not using the word agape. They don't have the same meanings.

And so we live in a Christianity now that more and more defines love as how you feel. And that's not what the word means. So Paul here begins this discussion with, remember verse 31 of chapter 12, "I'm gonna show you a better way." In chapter 12, he talks about all the gifts they had. There was prophecy. There was powerful speaking in their church. There was speaking in tongues. And then he says, "Okay, let me show you something better than all that. Something more important than all that that was happening in the Corinthian Church."

Verse 1 of chapter 13, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels," hyperbole, typical Pauline hyperbole, if I could have private conversations with angels that none of the rest of you could even understand, boy, that'd be a spiritual guy, wouldn't it? He says, "If I could speak with the tongue of angels and have not agape, I have become a sounding brass or a clanging cymbal." I'm just as someone who doesn't know how to play a trumpet walking around making a screeching, irritating, meaningless noise on the trumpet. He says, "If I could talk to angels and I don't have agape," that's how good that is. That's how meaningless it is.

Verse 2, and now this becomes overwhelming in what he's saying. "And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge," he's talking about biblical knowledge here. He says, "If I understand everything about the Bible, and though I have all faith so that I can remove mountains or move mountains but have not agape, I am nothing." Now, remember, he's not saying that you can have agape without those things. You can't have agape without biblical knowledge. You can't have agape without understanding some biblical mysteries. You can't have agape without having faith. But it is possible to have knowledge and not have agape. It's not possible to have one without the other, but it is possible to have this one without this one. And that's what's so important to understand.

You and I could have a great belief in God, a dynamic belief in God, and not be like God in the way we think. And so he says, "We have to have more than that. We even have to have more than faith. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned but have not agape, it profits me nothing." In other words, you can even do good actions but for wrong motives because agape at its core deals with our motives. It's why we do what we do. That's what agape is all about.

So you can never commit murder but be so filled with hate that you don't have agape. You can never steal but be so filled with covetousness that you don't have agape. It's your motives. Agape deals with why. And then it always produces actions. Always produces actions.

So last time we went through chapter 4, love suffers long, and showed how. Agape is not a doormat, but agape is willing to suffer with other people's wrongs, is willing to suffer with other people who may be...you know, there's a misunderstanding. It's willing to suffer with other people that you have a conflict with. And the reason why, and this is paramount, if there's only one thing you got out of that sermon, this should be it. Agape is always concerned with what is best for the other person I'm dealing with.

And there is a time when the other person going to jail is actually what's best for them. There's times. There's times when saying no to somebody is what's best for them. I've seen people have their lives destroyed by never having the ability to say no. Well, you know, having another person taking advantage of you and destroying their character, is that good for them? No. So if it's best for them to say no, you say no. But see, so many of the times, our motives are selfish. So, agape has to do with always trying to decide, and that's why this is such a huge thing because none of us have this down yet. If you do, praise God. But I don't.

Every situation, is my motive what's best for that person? How I act, how my emotions are displayed, what I say. Is there a time to be soft and kind? Is there a time to be harder and more corrective? We usually make those decisions based on our feelings. How we react to people is almost based on our feelings. Agape is not based on our feelings. It's based on what's best for the person. That's the way God is.

We went through that one quality. The next quality on that list in chapter 4 is love suffers long and is kind. This is the whole purpose of the parable of the Good Samaritan. Go and do likewise. Who is my neighbor? And His answer is everybody is my neighbor. I don't know about you, but when I drive up to a stoplight and someone says, "I'm homeless, give me money," I have a hard time because my first reaction is to ignore them. I can't always ignore them. But, you know, I had an interesting experience lately. I don't always have a lot of money to give, and giving them money isn't always the best thing. I don't know. But I keep water bottles in the car. And I'll roll down the window and say, "Here, want some water?"

Yesterday, I bought... My wife loves bagels, and we hardly ever have bagels. And I was at the hospital visiting somebody, and I went by Einstein Bagels, and I bought her six bagels. And I'm driving home, and there's a homeless person. And I rolled down the window and said, "Here, have a fresh bagel." And the person looked at me in disgust and said, "I have no place to put that." Okay. So I put it back in the bag and drove off. But, you know, if the person needed food, then a bagel is what I should have given him. I can't solve every world's problem. I can help that problem right there. I have a hard time with that one because I don't wanna give money away all the time. You don't know, they're gonna go use it for drugs. But I don't wanna make that assumption either. But I give them water, I'll give them food. Acts of kindness. You say, "Is that your neighbor?" Well, yes. I don't know anything about that neighbor, but that's a neighbor. At that moment, that's a neighbor.

This idea that kindness is not measured by the other person, but kindness is measured by you. Kindness is measured by who you are. You simply do acts of kindness, always considering what is best for that person. I've had junkies come up and ask for money, and it's obvious. And I'm not gonna go support their habit, right? I have sat down with junkies in McDonald's and bought them a hamburger. Nobody else would sit around us because the smell was so bad. See? And you don't do that with everybody. I'm not saying you should do that with everybody. I'm saying you have to decide at each moment of every time of life, with everybody you come in contact with, what should I do here that is best for that person? We don't always know what's best. You pray and do the best you can. But the point being, that's your motivation.

Out of that comes acts of kindness. It's a way of thinking. It's opening the door when you're walking through a door and there's somebody behind you, right? And you open the door and let them go first. It's a way of being, it's a way of thinking, and it's a way of being kind.

Romans chapter 12. Romans chapter 12 is a real shotgun chapter. Paul just sort of seems to be all over the place here. But like so many of Paul's writings, as you go through it over and over again, you start to realize he's actually in a pattern. He'll have a thought. And, you know, many of Paul's writings, he didn't write, he dictated it. So, you know, when you dictate something, you'll say it, and then you'll say, "Well, add this. And, you know, that makes me... You better add this." And that's what you find a lot of times in Paul's writings. Sometimes you find this brilliant argument, and then sometimes you think, "Wow, it's coming all over the place."

Well, he's dictating it, and there actually are threads that run through it. When you find those threads, you find that he's just pouring out this practical idea of Christianity. So in Romans 12, let's start in verse 9. Because he's telling the church how to act among themselves and then how to act towards the world. So he's saying you start with yourself. Agape starts inside the church. And then we exhibit that because it's part of our character with everyone we come in contact with. So we learn to suffer long with each other. If we can't suffer long with each other, how in the world are we gonna suffer long with that jerk you have to go to work with every day? Right?

If we can't learn to be kind with one another, we'll never learn to be kind with the world. So Paul says it starts here. So in verse 9, he says, "Let agape be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil and cling to what is good." They say, "Well, those seem like detached ideas, but they're not." Hypocrisy means the play act. Now, there's a difference. Understand, there's a difference between learning something and play acting. For most of you, when you first started to keep the Sabbath, it felt strange but you did it anyways. You weren't play acting, you were learning something new.

Play acting is if you keep the Sabbath and you really don't think you should, but you just do it because, "Yeah, I like going to church with these people." In other words, you're doing it for a wrong motive. So just because you're learning something new doesn't mean... Sometimes you do things and you don't know it. Sometimes you learn kindness by saying, "Okay, I have to be kind here, but I don't feel like it." Hypocrisy doesn't mean you're going against your feelings. Hypocrisy means you're doing something just for show. There's no meaning in it.

So he says, "Let agape be without hypocrisy." In order to do that, you have to hate what is evil, but you have to grab hold of what is good. It is easy to hate evil. It is difficult to love good. We're very good at hating evil. But in all honesty, we're not very good sometimes at loving good. We're just not. When all you do is hate evil, you become a very negative person. So he says, "Okay, do this without play acting. Hate good, but grab hold of that good. Love it." He says, "Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love. Phileo." He says, "In the church, we have to have phileo." We are to have certain emotions towards each other. Remember, phileo is a very emotional love.

So he says, "Okay, if we're gonna understand agape, we also have to understand phileo, and it starts here." It starts among us. It starts between husband and wife. It starts with our kids. It starts in our congregation. This is what we must do. We must have affection towards one another. So agape breaks down into phileo in actions and emotions, in honor, giving preference to one another. You know how hard? I've got three or four sermons in Romans 12. I'm gonna take 10 minutes to go through a few verses. There's three or four sermons in this chapter.

He says, "Look, step back and say, okay, what we're going to do is I'm going to look out for what is best for you." That's agape. I'm going to think about in every situation, what should I do that's best for that person? That's what it means, giving preference one to another. Core concept of agape. Not my desires always, not my wants. But what's best for that person? Now, what's amazing is if everybody's doing that, they actually take care of each other's wants and needs and desires. That's what's amazing about it.

It's not selfish to have needs. It's not selfish to, if you're alone, to want companionship. It's not selfish to want somebody else, once in a while, to help you. You know, caretakers have that problem. They're helping other people all the time and feel guilty if somebody helps them. No. You know, if other people are gonna learn agape, that means you and I have to have needs that other people have to react to. That's the way it works. But when you really understand that, it's okay at times to say, "Oh, good, I can let you now show agape, and it's okay. I'm not being selfish." But then that helps me so that tomorrow I show agape. That's what happens. Showing preference, one to another.

Verse 11, "Not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer." So now he seems to go off on another subject. He just listed... You can almost see Paul sitting here and just scribe, writing this down. Tell him this and tell him this and tell him this. And, you know, this is all one sentence. And tell him this, and tell him, "You do this." And then he goes back to his premise, okay? He's back now to agape and phileo and how they work together in relationship.

"Distributing to the needs of the saints, given to hospitality." He said so in the church, we should always be looking out for each other's needs. So we now have a responsibility to reach out for each other's needs, and we are to be hospitable. You say, "Well, I don't have a nice enough house. I couldn't have people over my house. I couldn't afford to feed them." Feeding them isn't a necessity. Sharing time with each other, as was mentioned in the sermonette, is a necessity. If we're gonna have agape, and here, Paul says, "You also have to have phileo in the church," then we must spend time with each other. We are required to.

Brotherly love means we become brothers and sisters. We're required to do it. I don't know how else to do it, except spend time together. He says, verse 14, "Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse." Oh, we're back to that suffering long. I wish they'd get off that. You know, let's move on to something else. Agape suffers long. Agape doesn't always defend itself. Now, I showed you where there are times that if you have agape, you do defend yourself. But why are you doing it? To defend yourself or because it's what's best for the other person? Why are you doing it?

I mean, sometimes we can defend ourselves with our husband and wife, and that's actually not the best thing to do. And you may be the one that's wronged. Remember here, there are persecutors. There are people doing something wrong. There are persecutors, but the point is that there are times when persecuting back is the wrong thing to do if we're driven by agape. He says, "Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep." Ah, this is tough. Verse 16, "Be of the same mind toward one another. Do not set your mind on high things, but associate with the humble, and do not be wise in your own opinion."

We have two points here that are sermons in themselves. We will expand verse 15 and 16 as we go through agape because there are other points in 1 Corinthians 13 that takes us back to this. But one, we have empathy. You cannot have agape without empathy. Empathy is the ability to understand someone else even to the point that you share their emotions. You have the ability to understand someone else. I'm amazed how many times when there's conflicts, when you finally understand the other person, you say, "Oh." That's what we're fighting about. That's not that important after all or sometimes it's just a matter of...remember the time I gave a sermon and I had a ball up here and asked you what color it was, it was blue, and I said it was green? I said, "How many of you think I'm color blind?" And I turned the ball around, the other side was green, remember? Just depending on which side of the ball you were looking at.

Empathy is important. Now, ladies, most women, and I'm talking generalities here, most women, empathy is easier for you. Men, we have to learn it. You know? Another man crying, and what do we say? Come on, don't be such a sissy. Why? You know why we really, really do that, guys? Because we know if we empathize, guess what we're gonna do too? We're gonna cry with them and we don't wanna go there. Empathy is something we have to learn more than most women. Now, some men are just naturally empathetic, but most of us aren't. We learn it.

Ladies, most of you tend to be more empathetic. That's why you understand children so easily. You know what they're feeling very quickly many times. But you know, ladies, you ever be with another woman who's mad at her husband and you become incredibly empathetic? I'm pretty sure soon you're mad at her husband. And then pretty soon, you're mad at your husband. And you go home and he says, "Hi, honey," and you say, "You beast." Empathy has to be understood, okay? Once again, empathy has to be controlled within what agape is. So we'll talk more about that as we go on. But you can't have agape without empathy. You cannot have agape unless you are willing to understand the other person even if you disagree with them and even if they're wrong.

Because if you have agape and a person is wrong, it says, "Go to your brother if they sin." You go to your brother and say, "We need to talk." Now you can say, "You sinner, if you don't repent, God's gonna throw you in a lake of fire." Or you can say, "Why did you do that?" I'm amazed how many times when you start with, why did you do that, this floodgate of repentance begins. Because the person has been justifying themselves. And when you say, "Why did you do that?" And they begin to say why, they begin to say, "But I'm wrong."

Understand. We'll talk more about understanding in the next few weeks, too, because you can't go through 1 Corinthians 13 without getting there. So we have this empathy that we have to develop, and then we have to learn to control empathy. Then we have this idea of be humble, associate with the humble, and do not be wise in your own opinion. I tell you something, you know, we all do self-talk. I talk to myself all the time. Usually, it's, "Gary, you're being stupid. You know, Gary, you can't do this. Gary, the scripture says this." I'm telling myself that all the time.

And here's something I say all the time to myself. Discussion will be gone. We're in an ocean of opinions. And my little bucket of opinion means nothing in an ocean of opinions. So I might as well just set it down. It really has no meaning in an ocean of opinions. We have to understand there are truths established by God. There is reality. Now, I don't usually do this. I'm gonna tell a story where I actually did something right for once. Usually, I'm telling where I do something wrong. But I didn't think about it at the time because of the impact that... It was such a minor thing to me. The impact it had on another person was immense.

I'm a big history buff. I'm sitting in a bread and breakfast that was the headquarters of Robert E. Lee's army during, I think, it was the 1863/1864 campaign. And this house was his headquarters. Kim and I are sleeping in the room that Robert E. Lee slept in. And the host of this bed and breakfast is a man who worked for the U.S. government, the best I can figure was CIA or military intelligence, I couldn't tell, for 20 years. He was retired, ran this, and he was a history buff, and he had this huge library of American history. And every afternoon after we went and toured historical sites, at 4:00 o'clock in the afternoon, we'd go sit down, and he would serve us wine and cheese, and he would give us a history lesson. And I am just fascinated, this man knows more about Civil War history than I'll ever know.

And he's telling all this stuff, and, of course, pretty soon, my wife and her sister, and they're all sort of bored to death, but I'm just like asking questions. And finally, there's this one discussion, he's talking about the Battle of Little Round Top in the Battle of Gettysburg. And being from Texas, I said, "Well, did you know there was a Texas regiment that went up that hill?" And he looked at me and said, "There was no Texas regiment that went up that hill. It was an Alabamian regiment." Now, being from the deep south, there was great pride that those guys were from Alabama. Okay?

And I said, "Oh, okay." And then he went on and continued to teach us all this stuff and it was great. And after he left and he went off and drove off in his car, he had something to do, I walked over and pulled out one of his books and walked over to my brother-in-law and it said, "Two regiments that was attacked up the hill was from Alabama and Texas." I shut the book and put it back. Now, I didn't think anything about it. My brother-in-law looked at me and said, "That was amazing." I said, "What?" He said, "Well, first, that you would know something that's absolutely meaningless." He said, "You know how un-important that is?" I said, "Yeah, I know." He said, "But secondly, you felt no need to make him know that." And I said, "Well, why should I? It's a meaningless bit of information. This man is an expert. He was teaching me all kinds of things. What's that one little fact mean? It means nothing." You know, except I might have offended this man, which would have been a terrible thing to do. I was in his home, and there was no purpose in me.

Now, I have to say I'm not always like that as some of you know. Because in this point, there was no purpose. You see what I mean? That meaningless fact had no purpose except to try to say, "My opinion matters." And my opinion didn't matter. This man was brilliant. I'll never know what this man knows about American history. And I learned, I enjoyed spending three days having wine and cheese and having this man teach me things. This is a hard lesson to learn. In our democracy, it's almost impossible to learn where we believe all opinions are equal and they are not. All opinions are not equal. It's just not true.

Now, let's go on, verse 17. See why I said there's three sermons in this alone? Repay no one evil for evil. Have regard for good things in the sight of all men. He goes back to, come on, instead of always reacting with...people do bad things by doing bad back. Let's love the good here. Let's look for the good. Let's do for the good. If it is possible, as much as it depends on you, live peaceably with all men. It is not always possible. But you and I must do our part because this is what agape is. However much is possible, we try to do the peaceable thing. Because that's what's demanded of us. That's who we are because that's what God does.

Verse 19, "Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath for it is written, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay,' says the Lord. Therefore, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him a drink for in doing so, you will heap coals of fire in his head, and do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good." And verse 21 tells us why. If we are overcome with evil, we become just like the evil. So therefore, the best way to fight evil is with good. And the way we do that, you and I have to give up the need for vengeance.

What we're going through here is the hardest Christianity you'll ever live. Be peaceable. Think the good. Two, go through as we've talked about here where we bless those who persecute us, we have empathy, we're not wise in our own opinion, and we have to give up the emotional need for vengeance. This is such a dilemma for us because we say, "Well, if I give up my need to punish that person, then there will be no justice." Justice is an issue of law. Sometimes there is no justice in the world you and I live in.

So what do we do when there is no justice? We want vengeance. There's a movie I saw as a child. I saw a couple years ago a second time and it had a profound effect on me as a child and now I know why. It's an old cowboy movie, and I think Gregory Peck is in it. Some of you will probably remember. And in this movie, he's a wealthy rancher, and he's out, you know, in town one day. He comes home and his wife has been raped and murdered. And so he gets on his horse, you know, he mourns, and he becomes hardened, and he gets on his horse, and he goes out and he starts following the tracks that lead away from his ranch. And one by one, he hunts down these men. And they're bad men. And one by one, he finds them and he shows them a picture of his wife. And one by one, they say, "I don't know who that is," and he kills them.

And finally, he gets to...I think there were four members of the gang, he gets to the last member of the gang, and he lives in Mexico, and he has a wife and a child, and he comes in, and he's gonna gun him down right in front of that wife and child. And the man explains the story of what really happened. Yes, they were a gang. And he was a man who got caught up in this gang. He didn't wanna be part of it. And yes, they had committed a crime. They had found a man, an old prospector. And one of the men in the gang had killed that prospector and stolen his gold. He had run away from the gang to get away from them because he didn't wanna be part of it. And he explained, they had crossed the corner of his ranch, but they had never seen or raped his wife or murdered her.

And the hero of the story now is trapped and he understands. And he goes to a church and he tells the priest, "What am I supposed to do? Justice demanded that those men be brought before law. Those men didn't kill my wife. I gunned them down one by one, which makes me just as bad as them, because I broke the law." And so it comes to this convoluted sort of, you know, "Well, it was okay, but it wasn't okay," ending. And it's left in this vague, what was right here? Was it okay for him to gun down those men because they were bad men? But he was gunning them down because they had raped his wife. And they had not raped and killed his wife. Therefore, he had become a law unto himself, and he had committed murder because the law did not give him the right.

See, you could always argue, "Well, okay, they killed or raped his wife. He had the right to do something." He had no right under the law. Justice would not allow him to do what he did. And I remember the impact that had on me as a child because I thought, "Whoa, there is a huge difference between justice and vengeance," because he had now committed murder by what he had done. And he realized and let the last man go because the last man hadn't done anything except get mixed in with some bad guys and got away from him as quickly as he could.

See, when you and I are driven by vengeance, we think it is justice, and it is not. It is not. Justice is an issue of law. Remember too, mercy is a commandment in the Torah. In the Old Testament, mercy is a command. Mercy is taught in the New Testament. What if a person repents of what they've done to you and God forgives them? Now, what must you do? I hope God never forgives that person until they get punished. And then God forgives the person. And now what are you gonna do? What do we do now?

We can't be driven by vengeance. And vengeance is an emotion, and is one of the most difficult things we have to deal with. Because when you've been mistreated, you want somebody to pay, and they don't always pay. And if God forgives them, they never will pay. So now what do you do? And notice then that through all this, the emphasis is in not allowing evil actions from others to cause you to do evil. It's not like you deny that what they did was evil. And it's not that you deny that sometimes they need punishment. It's not that you deny the need sometimes for them to be confronted.

I mean, if your child steals from somebody, you're going to punish the child because that's what's best for the child. If you love them, you will punish them. If you don't punish them for stealing, you don't love your child. You don't have agape for your child. It's that simple. But you do it within measure, and you do it a certain way, and you do it with a certain motive. How many times as a parent have you punished your child because you were frustrated with them? You had a wrong motive, and that punishment didn't wield anything good, did it? Because your motive was wrong. It was out of frustration. It wasn't out of love for the child.

This gets down to every day. This gets down to the nitty gritty of what Christianity is all about. And we're only into suffer long and kindness. Okay? We're only into these two so far. And look how this is breaking down into how you think every day, what you do every day, what I do every day.

You know, I think of...in Luke 5, we won't have to turn there, but we have used it many times in many ways, how the leprous man came to Jesus Christ. And Jesus could have said, "Be healed," and nobody would touch a leprous man. He didn't have to touch him. The touching of the man was an act of kindness. Because this man, nobody would touch him. If you can imagine going through life where nobody will touch you. Christ walked over and touched him. He was gonna heal him anyways. The touching was an act of kindness because this person needed to be touched no matter how horrifying the person looked. Because it didn't say He healed him and then touched him. It says He touched him and then healed him. He touched him while he was still horrifying to touch. Okay? He touched him and then healed him.

Kindness. Simple acts of kindness. Agape is that. It is every day. Every way we come in... Now, none of us do this perfectly. And we'll get discouraged now and say, "Well, I can't do that." You can do what you can right now. Okay? You can do what you can today. And you won't be perfect today, but you can get up tomorrow and get a brand new chance. That's what's so neat about this. Tomorrow you get out of bed, and I guarantee, unless you're gonna go live in a log cabin tomorrow or go camp and never see another human being, you will have opportunities to do acts of kindness. We get a fresh start on this one every day. You get a fresh start to suffer long every day. Every day. But this all comes down to not only suffering long and its acts of kindness, it always comes back to not only those who treat you kind, but towards those who treat you unkind.

Think how many fights between a husband and wife would stop if when the other person is treating you poorly, you simply did an act of kindness back towards the other person. Think how many fights would stop right then and there. It doesn't matter that the other person's wrong. What if you did an act of kindness back? What? Seventy five percent of them would stop at that moment? I wonder how many.

Now, if we go back to 1 Corinthians 13:4, the next statement is agape envies not. Now, we mix up coveting and envy. They're two different things. Okay? They're two different things. Coveting is having a wrong desire for something. Okay? You neighbor has a really nicer house than you do and you wish you had that house. And it just bothers you. I would like to have a house like that someday. Maybe even that house. But it doesn't change the way you treat your neighbor. You're miserable. Coveting makes you miserable because you want something you don't have.

Envy is different. You know, even Webster's Dictionary gives this definition of envy, and really, listen to this. A feeling of discontent and ill will because of another's advantages for possessions. A feeling of discontent and ill will because of someone else's advantages and possessions. When you envy something, you actually despise the person who has it. When you envy something, you despise the person who has it. I've seen people despise someone because they married someone that they wanted to marry. Excuse me. Excuse me, or they have a job that they had, or they have a car.

You know, looking at your neighbor's Mustang and saying, "Oh, I wish I had one of those," and laying awake all night coveting is one thing. Envy drives you to tell everybody you know, "You know that guy has a car, he doesn't make that kind of money, I bet he's a thief." That's envy. "I bet you that guy's a thief. He has something I want." That can break down into anything. How many times do you see kids envy another kid because they think they're better looking? Right? Or smarter, or because they're an athlete. And they envy that so much that they actually mistreat the other child.

We do that as adults all the time. We mistreat people because they have something we want, or they have something we think we deserve. I've seen people leave the church because someone was ordained a deacon and that person said, "I should have been a deacon." And they actually hate the person who was ordained. That person never did anything to them, but they envy it. Envy is an emotional response and it is ill will towards somebody else because you have what I should have and I am better than you. And I must do something against you because of what you're doing, because of what you have, because of where you live, because of what you drive, because you got the promotion and I didn't. Because you make more money than I do. And just fill in the blank.

James chapter 3. Envy is at the core of who we are as corrupt human nature. We're always comparing ourselves to others, and then we're always wanting what they have. James 3:13. James says, "Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by good conduct that his works are done in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth." If we are driven by self-seeking, we want what we want and anybody or anything that keeps me from having what I want is bad. So if my neighbor has a nice car, my neighbor got a new Lexus, and I'm driving a 10-year-old Volkswagen, and my neighbor's a bad guy. So I tell all the other neighbors, "I think he's a thief. In fact, he's a car dealer. I know he's a thief." Right? And so what we do is slander the person because they have what we want.

Self-seeking in your hearts or bitter envy because envy makes you bitter. It makes you bitter. You always have to find somebody that's keeping you from getting what you want. And then that person becomes the focal point of your anger. And this can break down to anything in life. Bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. You will eventually lie. Understand, driven by envy, you will slander and lie. It will become what you do because you were driven towards bitterness towards the person who has what you want or keeping you in your mind from what you should have or be or get or possess. Or, "Wow, you know, this person received...they won some contest and they got a free cruise in the Caribbean. I should have got that. You know, I never liked her anyways," or as we say in the south. So you can say anything bad about anybody as long as you finish the sentence with, "Bless their heart," right?

He's such an ugly child, bless his heart. Paraphrase an Oscar Wilde story. He told a story about a man who decided, this was back in the middle ages, that he was gonna be righteous before God. He really wanted to live a righteous life. So he went out to the desert so he could not be tempted. And this man did not commit adultery. He prayed hours every day. He studied the Scriptures. He did not murder or lie or steal. He did not use God's name in vain. And he sacrificed 30 years of his life out there being a hermit. And he was alone. He received no honor, no recognition for what he was doing. And he lived this, what he considered a perfectly righteous life.

And so the demons now, it became a... You know, they wanted to prove which one was the best one. They were now in competition to get him to sin. And every day, for years after years, demons would attack him and do things to him and bring temptation into his life. And day after day, he resisted them. And one day, Satan comes along and he has this whole group of demons and they're just all depressed. That's wrong. Of course, he enjoyed them being depressed, but, you know, "We can't get this guy."

Then Satan said, "You're just a bunch of amateurs." So he's sitting there praying one day and Satan comes and whispers into his ear, "Remember your brother, the one who drank all the time, who slept around with all kinds of different women, who was dishonest, who just had no moral character at all? Remember him? He was just ordained a bishop and everybody looks up to him." And the man started to shake and his fists clenched. And anger came on his face. Satan turns to the demons and says, "That's how you do it, guys."

Simple envy. It's an emotion that drives us, just like this emotion of vengeance. To be avenged, to be proven right, we're driven by it. And agape doesn't go that way. Now, there are times to prove you're right. I'm not saying that. What is your motive in proving you're right? Is it proving you're right? Or is it because it's what's best for the other person? That's a hard question to ask sometimes, isn't it? Hard question to ask sometimes.

Envy, according to Proverbs 14.30, envy is rottenness to the bones. So how do you combat envy? Three ways that you can deal with envy. First, you have to stop comparing yourself with other people and be thankful for what God has given to you. We have to be thankful for what God has given to us every day. Like I said about Max, when I went to visit him, Kim and I came out of there like on a high. We went in to cheer him up, and we came out because he was thankful for what God had given to him.

I read a story years ago in the "Reader's Digest." It was a very long story, but it just made its point so simple. It was about a boy that was praying to God and God showed up. And the boy said, "I have a dream, God, and what I want in my life." He says, "I wanna live in a big house with a porch across the front, and I wanna have two St. Bernards and a garden out back. I wanna marry a woman who is tall and very beautiful and kind, who has long black hair and blue eyes, and who plays the guitar and has a beautiful voice. I want three strong sons to play football with when they grow up. One to be a scientist, one to be a senator, and one to be a quarterback for the 49ers. I want to be an adventurer who sails vast oceans and climbs tall mountains and rescues people. And I want a Ferrari. And I want to never have to pick up after myself."

Well, the man grew up, and he didn't get much of that in life. Never had a Ferrari, married a short woman who couldn't play the guitar for all the money in the world. Had three daughters, one of them had a birth defect, and she was in a wheelchair. Nothing worked out the way it was supposed to. And so he became depressed. The name of the story was "The Terribly Tragically Sad Man." And all he could see was God didn't give him what he wanted. God hadn't blessed his life. And so he went to his co-worker, one of his co-workers, and he said, "I'm just having a bad time here." And the person said, "You've got a great life, what's your problem?"

So he went to his best friend and he said, you know, "I'm having a bad time here." And the person said, "You have a great life, what's your problem?" So he went to his wife and his wife said, "I don't understand, you have a great life." So he went to a therapist. And he said, "I don't know what's wrong with me." And the therapist said, "There's nothing wrong with you. You have a great life. Time's up. That'll be $110." So he went to his accountant and he said, "My life's terrible." And his accountant said, "You have a great life." And after the discussion, the accountant said, "Well, you know, that was an hour. I'm gonna have to tack another $100 on our bill because I really wanna buy a Ferrari."

And so the man got sick and he ends up in a hospital. And he's laying there in the hospital, just his health destroyed, feeling miserable, and telling God, "Why did you not give me a good life?" And God shows up and says, "I really didn't want you to be sick." "Well, why did you make me sick?" "I didn't make you sick. You made yourself sick." Well, the man says, "I'm sick because I wanted all those things I dreamed of and told you of." And then God says, "You know what? It was a great dream. But it's not exactly what I had planned." He says, "If you notice, I did give you a kind, beautiful wife. She's short, yeah. She's not real thin, but great person. And I gave you three great daughters. I know you wanted sons, but boy, can that one play their guitar. And the other one? You know, she's gonna get a doctorate in chemistry. This girl's sharp. And the third one, that's one of the most wonderful, beautiful people you'll ever meet."

He says, "Yeah, I didn't give you that great big house. I know you have an apartment. But have you ever looked out your apartment off in the distance, you have a great view of the ocean? I know it's far to see, but it's there. I know you don't have any St. Bernards, but the apartment's too small anyways. So I gave you a cat." He said, "Actually, it's a pretty good package I put together." And the man said, "But it's not what I wanted, and I'm miserable." And God said, "Well, maybe have you ever really thought that you didn't give me what I wanted?"

And the man said, "Well. What do you mean I didn't give you what you wanted? I've been a Christian all these years." He said, "I just wanted you to be happy with what I gave you." I just wanted you to be happy with what I gave you. What a viewpoint of life, isn't it? Instead, we want what everybody else has. It's not bad to have dreams and desires, but we have to understand that this idea that we want and we're motivated and we're angry with what other people have and we slander them because of position or because of goods or because of whatever. Agape never goes.

Another way we fight envy is that you must learn to really enjoy the temporary physical things you have for exactly what they are. Temporary physical thing. How many times do we eat a good meal but we're so upset over something we never even enjoy the meal we're eating? How many times have we wasted a blessing, and afterwards said, "You know, I should have enjoyed that more?" Right? How many times if you're older you look back and think, "You know, I should have spent more time with my kids. I should have enjoyed that more," right? But I was too busy because my neighbor had a Ferrari and I didn't. And I wanted one so bad. So I had to do what it took to get that. And I missed out on what God had given to me. It was right there in front of me. How many times do you hear people say that? Because we're driven by this envy.

And then the third point, and it's something that we read in Romans 12. Okay? And that passage here, go back and review that passage. We have to learn to rejoice in another's blessings. You wanna have a good day when your friend comes up and says, "You can't believe what happened to me." You know, I have a lot of wanderlust. I just wanna travel the world. When I was a child, one of the things I asked God to do was help me to travel the world. Okay? Well, I'm 54 and I haven't exactly traveled the world. Although I have travelled. My bucket list still has about 30 places I wanna go to. Okay?

And I've had to learn when someone comes up to me and says, "You can't believe it, I just spent the greatest week in Egypt," instead of saying, or feeling, "Oh, I'm never gonna get to go to Egypt," I say, "Let me see your pictures." And I get a kick out of what they went through. Now, you can either go around saying, "Oh, why did they get a blessing and why don't I ever get the blessing?" And have God say, "Well, you're living in San Antonio. I could have put you in Newark." Come on, folks. You see what I mean? And if you're in Newark, there's actually worse places than that, although I've been to Newark and I'm sure there's worse places.

But you see what I mean? We forget what's right in front of us. You'll never do everything you want to do in life. But what you've got is good. If God's involved... Now, if God's not involved in your life, I don't know what to say. But if He's involved, it's good. It's not always easy, it's not always comfortable, but it's good. And we should learn to rejoice with other people. So here we are. We've started through this list, and in two sermons, we've only got through three words. That's it. We've got a long ways to go if we're gonna understand what this really means and how we are to live it.

Sometimes it's easier to see Christianity only as our requirement to attend Sabbath services, or to believe a certain set of doctrines, or to have a certain knowledge of prophecy. Now, I'm not saying those aren't important. Please understand. We break the Sabbath, we will break our relationship with God. We don't believe the basic doctrines that are set forth in the scripture, we will not have a right relationship with God, and we cannot have agape. Prophecy is there to inspire us and lead us towards God. Those are important. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying Christianity does more than that. Those are starting points.

The whole purpose... You know when it says Christ was the end of the law in Romans? The word there in Greek literally means He is the goal of the law. The whole reason for the law is to take you to Christ, and the whole reason for Christianity is to what? Become Christ-like. We see the law lived in Him. And that's what we are to become. So to say we keep the law and not be Christ-like is a meaningless statement. And you can keep the letter of the law, and I can keep the letter of the law and not be Christ-like. It is possible. It is possible not to steal and never commit murder. There are atheists who have never stolen and never committed murder.

If our righteousness doesn't exceed that of the Pharisees, it's meaningless. And they kept the law. They tithed. They kept the Sabbath. They didn't participate in paganism. They believed in the only one true God. They didn't use His name in vain. These things are important, but Christianity is worse, or more. Agape is more than a profession of love, and agape is more than an emotional response. Agape suffers long, it is kind, and it envies not, and it is a lot more than that. And that's what we'll be going through for the next few weeks. So be sure and show up next week, okay?