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Agape Love: Part 8

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Agape Love

Part 8

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Agape Love: Part 8

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Gary Petty's 8 part sermon series defining the very righteousness of God that we are to attain.

Transcript

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] I know it seems like we've been talking about 1 Corinthians 13 for a long time. Actually, we've been talking about 1 Corinthians 13 for a long time. We've been going through this chapter for about two and a half months, not every sermon. So far we've done seven sermons on 1 Corinthians 13. We showed why it's so important. And then we went through all the attributes that Paul talks about there in terms of these are the attributes of the character of God that we must have developed in us. 1 Corinthians 13 is explaining what Christianity is supposed to lead us to. We're supposed to become a certain kind of person. Now, none of us are there yet. Nobody's there yet. But it's what we should be striving for, to become a certain kind of person.

Now let's go to, because we're going to end up now, we're going to sum up what 1 Corinthians 13 is all about. First three verses, Paul talks about why it's important. Then he gives all the attributes of agape. So let's pick it up now in 1 Corinthians 13:7. 1 Corinthians 13:7, as we look at and explore now today the conclusion that Paul has in discussing this issue. Because now he wants to conclude it all. He wants to bring it all into a very narrow, very important focal point. And so in verse 7 he says, and it's the middle of a sentence. So we can say agape, because that's the subject here, agape, "the love of God, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." This is what happens in your life and my life when we have agape, when we have all the attributes that we've talked about now over seven sermons. When all those attributes are in our lives, this will give you the ability to bear all things, to believe all things.

Now, the belief here isn't, you know, you just believe everything. You're talking about the things of God. You will believe the things of God. You will trust in the things of God. Hopes all things. Hope is a very important element in our human existence. We'll talk about that more in a minute. And you will endure all things. I've read in commentaries on this passage that this is just hyperbole. Nobody can bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things. But it's not hyperbole. This is God. And this is what we can learn over time, over the course of a lifetime with God's Spirit. This is what we can learn to become. Love, agape, never fails, verse 8. It doesn't fail. You and I fail. Whenever you and I fail in our Christianity, it's because we don't have agape. It's because we're not tied into God and the power of God is coming through us. Because when the power and love of God is coming through us, we won't fail because He never fails.

But whether there are prophecies, they will fail. All prophecy comes to an end. Sometimes there's a prophecy given and they have a contingency. I mean Jonah went to Nineveh and said, "God is going to punish you unless you repent." And he was shocked when they repented. And God went, "Okay, I'm not going to punish you now because you repented." He says, "The prophecy failed." At the end of the book of Jonah, he's very upset. I said, "No." I said, "There's a contingency to this one." All prophecies end up being completed. All prophecies end up where they are completed. Everything in this Bible someday is completed. He says, "Whether there are tongues, they will cease." Gifts from God are wonderful things to have. Gifts to God don't last forever in any human being because we grow older, we die. The gift dies with us, He gives it to somebody else. He says, "Whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away." For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. Paul says we don't know everything. Only God knows everything. So we have to work with what we have.

Verse 10 says, "But when that which is perfect has come," when Christ has come and He's perfected all things, then that which is in part will be done away with. That which is in part will be done away with. When Christ has perfected everything that the Father has given to Him, and He turns around, according to Scripture, and gives it back to the Father, then there won't be a need for a lot of things. I mean, there's a time when there's no need for baptism, right? Everybody's already changed. There's a time, there's, there'll come a time in history when there's no need for the word repentance because everybody has either had repented or will not repent. There will come a time in history where there's no need for the term lake of fire because it'll already have been in the past. Everything will have been perfected. This is what he's talking about here.

He says, we look at things right now that haven't even happened yet. There's going to come a time when those things will be gone, they'll be in the past, everything will be perfected. Then he says in verse 11, and this is so important, because this has to do with agape. This has to do with what we're talking about. It has to do with Christian maturity. That's what agape is. It is Christian maturity. We were not called to stay in first grade. We were called to grow as the children of God and to keep the Ten Commandments in the letter is first grade. To not murder, that's first grade Christianity. Does it mean you can murder? Of course not. But it's first grade stuff. We learn, don't lie. Right? Don't steal. Keep the Sabbath day, don't use idols. That's first grade. That's launching pad. That's where you learn so that you can now mature. Now if you don't learn those things, you can't mature. If you worship idols, you can never grow towards agape. But the letter of the Ten Commandments is the launching pad into maturity.

And here he says, "When I was a child, I spoke as a child. I understood as a child. I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things." He says, "I thought I knew what Christianity was all about when I was a Pharisee." That's what Paul's basically saying here. And then I realized... And that everything he learned as a Pharisee wasn't bad, by the way. There's a lot of things he learned as a Pharisee he taught in what is now Scripture, like the Ten Commandments, like the Holy Days. There's lots of things he learned as a Pharisee that were right. But he said, "You know what?" They reached a point in his life he realized, whoa, that was just first grade. I'm supposed to move beyond that. I'm supposed to grow out of that. Those lessons are supposed to teach me something and take me somewhere.

Now I'm going to skip to verse 13 because I want to come back to 12 later. "And now abide, faith, hope, and agape." These three. But the greatest of these is agape. I have struggled with that statement for years. It took me the longest time to figure that out. Now maybe you haven't, but it took me a long time, because to me the greatest of the three must be faith. So how can you say the greatest is agape? It's only when I realized how faith, hope, and love form something. It's not like you can have agape without faith and hope. But these three components form something. They form a mature Christian. And when he says agape is the greatest of these, he's making a point. And I want to show you what that point is.

So what we're going to have to do is take a little bit now and look at basic component of faith in the context of 1 Corinthians 13. The basic component of hope in the context of 1 Corinthians 13, and then see how agape fits into those two things and why Paul would say it's the greatest. How can it be the greatest? Hebrews 11, let's start with faith. Hebrews 11, the faith chapter. We can't talk about faith in detail without ending up either talking about Hebrews 11 or some principle that's in Hebrews 11. So let's look at some components. We won't go through the entire chapter verse by verse. But let's look at some of the components of this chapter. Let's look at what faith is in definition. And then why that has to lead us to something else.

Faith of itself must take us someplace. This is why James said, "Faith without works is dead." Faith must produce something or it's not faith. So what does it produce to be real faith? Verse 1. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Faith is the reality. Sometimes it's translated the realization or the reality. Faith is the understanding. It is actually absolutely believing, understanding, and seeing as real something that nobody else sees. And therefore, it becomes the substance, it becomes the confidence. Faith means that I see a reality, I believe in that reality, I trust in that reality, and I have confidence in that reality. And everybody else looks at you and says, "I have no idea what you're talking about because I don't see it." And the reason why they don't see it, faith by its very definition is unseen. By definition, it's unseen. By definition, it's unseen.

I have faith that late this afternoon I'm going to get in a car and drive over to Houston and I'm going to arrive at the church events and spend the whole evening talking and fellowshipping with Church Brother. I believe that. It's still a faith at this point because it's not a reality. It's a plan. It's a hope. It's a desire. But it's not a reality. It'll only be a reality if I arrive. But faith and what he's talking about here, faith in God, is substance. It's absolute rock-solid inside-you substance in something you can't see. You believe God exists, it's as real to you as if you exist. It's as real to you as if anything else exists. It's real. But you don't see that. You see the results of God, but you don't see God. But He's a reality to you. So by its very definition, faith involves something you actually do not see.

If you have faith that you're going to be healed and you're anointed, that's faith. After you're healed, there is no longer a need for faith that you will be healed because you now have experienced the reality. You see it. When the man said to Christ, "Please heal my withered hand," he had faith in a reality he did not see. When his hand was made whole, he no longer had faith in the reality. He saw the reality. So you can say, "Well, he had faith in God," that's true. But the faith that he would be healed, he didn't need anymore. He was already healed. When you receive it, you don't have to have faith in it anymore. So faith in this context of Hebrews is an absolute belief and trust in something you do not see. You don't see it. It's before the fact. It's before it's everybody else's season.

He makes a perfectly logical way of proving this point in verse 3. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. What he says here is you believe that God created the universe. And yet you weren't there. You didn't see him do it. There's a perfect example of faith. Which, by the way, is a very good point when talking to evolutionists. Since they weren't there, their assumption on evolution is also a faith. It's also a faith. They weren't there. So they have a faith, and their faith has no basis of fact. The creation itself proves a creator. But since I wasn't there... You say, "Well, was it visible? Will you visibly see God create the earth?" No. But I believe it with all my heart. I trust it with all my heart.

If I didn't believe that was true, you might as well go out, eat, drink, and be merry because there's no purpose in life and there is no future if God didn't create this. It's nothingness. It's meaningless. Life has no meaning if God didn't create this. We all believe it. We believe it just as much as anything else in life. God created it. He says, "Now there, you understand faith." You didn't see it, but you know it. You believe it. It's part of who you are. It's a substance. You couldn't tear it out of you if you wanted to. It's part of the substance of who you are. 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 a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him." Three components here that is a sermon in itself. You must believe that God is. Absolute belief. You must trust him because you must believe that he is a rewarder of those who follow him. So you must trust.

I follow you because I trust that you will take care of me and that you will reward me. So you have a belief that He is, you have a trust, and you must seek him diligently. Faith involves seeking God diligently. You can't just say, "Oh, I know God exists out there someplace. And I'll just live my life the best I can. And I know that He loves me so everything will be okay." That's not faith. Faith is diligently seeking God. So you believe that He is. You trust that He is a rewarder, so you will follow, and you diligently seek what He wants. Three components of faith.

Now let's go to verse 7 here. Read a little bit of this passage. So now he starts to give examples from history to prove his point. The writer of Hebrews says, "Now let me give you some examples." As I put these examples together, you'll see what I mean about faith. It's impossible to please God. You must diligently seek Him. You must believe He's a rewarder. It's a substance of something you don't see. And then when it happens, you knew what was going to happen. He says, "By faith, Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith." By faith, he built the ark. So his faith produced something. If he would have said, "Yes, Lord, I know that you're going to bring a flood," and not built the ark, what would have happened? So his faith produced something.

Verse 8, "By faith, Abraham obeyed." Abraham didn't obey God because he just feared Him, because He was bigger than Him. And you see, sometimes people obey God because they fear God so much. God's bigger than me. I don't want to do what God says, but if I don't, He'll get me. God is mean and terrible, so I have to do what He says. That's not faith. They actually may lead to some obedience, but that's not faith. True obedience comes from faith. You trust God knows what He's doing, and you will follow Him. I believe that He is. I believe that He will reward me. And I will diligently seek what He wants me to do. By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive his inheritance. And he went out not knowing where he was going. He had no idea where God was going to take him. You ever be like that in life? I have no idea where God's going to take me next, right? We've all been there. That's when you've got to step back and say, "I trust you. You must show me. I diligently seek you and what you want, and I will follow."

By faith, verse 9, "He dwells in the land of promise," as in a foreign country. "Dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise. For he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is of God. By faith, Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged him faithful who had promised." It's a very important point there. Why did Sarah? Why did Sarah have a child when it was physically impossible for her to have a child? Because she judged God strong enough, powerful enough, and honest enough to do what He said. And so she received it.

Faith is only as meaningful as what you have faith in. If I have faith in my own faith... I've heard people say that. "Well, you know, I have enough faith. I know God is going to do this because of my faith." Your faith is in your faith. That means your faith is only as strong as you are. If your faith is in God, then your faith is as strong as God. Who do we actually have faith in? She judged God capable of doing what she could not do. And so God did it.

Verse 17 says, "By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. And he would receive the promise offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, and Isaac your seed shall be called." What does that mean? Do you realize the dilemma? I've mentioned this many times. In Isaac, you will have children. God promised him, Isaac will have children. Now go kill him. If you read through here and other passages, there's only one way that he could do that. He believed God was gonna resurrect him. Because God would not lie to him, so God would resurrect him, so he would do what God wanted, even though it made no sense to him at all. He would do what God said, because he believed God loved him, he believed God loved his son, he believed God knew what he was doing, he believed God was going to do what was best, and he believed as he raised the knife to kill his own son, he believed that boy was going to have children. Can you imagine that? He's telling him, "God will resurrect you, son."

And what's amazing is Isaac submitted to being sacrificed. I can imagine he could out-wrestle that old man and run away. I mean, when you try to put together how old he was, it's somewhere between 17 and 35. Abraham's over 100. I don't think there's much of a contest if Isaac says, "I'm not doing this." What happens is, is he says, "Yes, Father, if this is what God wants, then he will take care of it. Make it quick and painless." That's faith. We talk about faith. Living faith is a whole lot harder.

Now let's go back to verse 13. Notice that the writer here says, "These all died in faith, not having received the promises." Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Moses. Mary, the mother of Jesus? Peter, Paul, James, John. All these men and women died and they never received all the promises God made to them. In their last breaths, they were waiting in faith for something they had not yet seen. In the last few weeks of my dad's life, he talked about the resurrection. He was about to die, but he saw something that other people could not see. He saw it. He believed in it. And he said, "I will wait for it." These people waited for it. He says, "having seen the promises, but assured of them." It was the substance of their life. The promises of God were the substance of their life. Embraced them. They didn't just accept them. They embraced them every day. These people's lives were based on promises they had not seen. But they embraced, they loved, they lived for and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

"For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland." Truly, if they had been called to mine that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they desire better that is a heavenly country. And then I want you to really look at this next sentence. Because when we have this kind of faith, God says this about them, He says it about you. I want you to understand this. This is a statement that can be made about you, about me, when we have this kind of faith. "Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God and He has prepared a city for..." He has prepared a kingdom. And I have seen it, neither have they. But He is not ashamed to look down on certain people and say, "That's my kid, that's my child, that's my daughter, that's my son." He's not ashamed to say that about certain people. Sometimes He's ashamed, I think, to say it about you and me at times. And sometimes He's not because we hang on to these promises.

Verse 32. Verse 32. The writer of Hebrews 11 goes on, talks about all these examples, and then towards the end of the chapter here he says, "And what more shall I say for the time when it failed? I'm sorry time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barack and Samson and Jephthah and also of David and Samuel and the prophets." He says, "You want more examples of people who had faith who lived it, who embraced it." This is what faith really is. It's substance. It's what your life is all about. Everything else is attached but it is the core substance of who you are. He says verse 33, "who through faiths subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions." Did Daniel stop the mouth of lions? Did he simply throw into the pit, look at a bunch of hungry lions and say, "Oh, now, kitty, settle down?" Because I tell you what, when David, or when Daniel dropped in that pit, he wasn't saying, "By my faith, shut your mouths, oh, great cats." He was saying, "Almighty God, please save me or I'm really doomed." Right? "I'm cat food." And God shut their mouths. Not Daniel. God shut their mouths.

Faith is only as real as what gets put in. God is real. He goes on, he says, "They quench the violence of fire, escape the edge of the sword, out of weakness remain strong, became valiant in battle, turn to flight the armies of their aliens. Women receive their dead, raise the life again." Now I like to stop right there. Because that's where I really like this chapter to end. These are the things I'm going to get. I have faith in God, and I'm going to fight armies and shut the mouths of lions. And I'm going to go places where nobody else can go, and God's going to take care of me, and God's going to just make my life perfect. He goes on, "others were tortured." He doesn't say others were tortured because they had no faith. Others were tortured and had faith. They endured their torturing because they had faith, because they believed God, because it was the substance of their lives, because it was the core of who they were, and you couldn't take it away from them. Excuse me. Losing my voice. You couldn't take it away from them.

He says, "not accepting deliverance." They could have accepted deliverance. They could have accepted deliverance. But they did not. "That that they might obtain a better resurrection." They saw a resurrection that nobody else saw. They saw a kingdom that nobody else saw. They wanted to be part of that so bad it didn't matter what it takes to get there. This is faith. Still others had trials of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonments. They were stoned. They were sawn in two. They were tempted. They were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, and tormented. Well, if I knew Christianity was going to be that, I'm not sure I'd become a Christian. I'm not trying to become a Christian, right? Faith is whether you subdue the armies or you're subdued by the armies, you believe God no matter what the outcome. That's faith. That's right.

Then notice verse 33. Of these people, Isaiah, sawn asunder, John the Baptist, wandering around and eating bugs. According to the scripture, eating locusts or eating bugs, eventually having his head cut off. David being a king for 40 years in a glorious way. And you can see these people had all different experiences, right? All different experiences. People watching their loved ones being raised from the dead. Others watching their loved ones die. He said, if you put all these people, but they all had faith, of whom the world was not worthy, these are people that the rest of society, according to God, are not even worthy of them because they are His people. Now, does that mean he doesn't love the rest of humanity? Of course he does. What is it He wants from humanity? Eventually, faith. Eventually every human being is going to have to have faith and trust in God in order to have eternal life. He says they wandered in deserts and mountains and dens and caves of the earth. And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise. They still wait. They died in faith, not seeing what they had faith in. And here's why. God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us.

They're not perfected. because they're waiting for God to complete His perfection process. When Jesus Christ comes back, there will be a group of people prepared because they believed it, and they will be prepared for Him. Abraham waits for us. Moses waits for us. Mary waits for us. They all wait at rest for us. And if Christ doesn't come back for 50 years, we will wait in the grave. Many of us, some of us will still be alive. If Christ doesn't come back for 50 years, many of us will wait in the grave for you, those who are alive then, to be completed. And when enough are completed, Christ will come back. Faith is so much more than simple belief. It is a trust. Total complete trust in God even when we don't understand what he's doing. So you think, okay, that must be the greatest of the three. And I have to tell you, for many, many years, I couldn't understand 1 Corinthians. It bothered me. Faith is the greatest of the three, Paul. You're wrong. Well, I didn't go that far. But me and Paul had a problem for a long time.

Agape can't be the greatest of the three, faith must be. But he says, faith, hope, agape. What is hope? What is hope? You know, when you look at the Greek word and the Hebrew word is very similar, but the Greek word is translated hope. It simply means favorable and confident expectations, the happy anticipation of good. Hope is the happy anticipation of good. When you find out that you have to...when you have a toothache and it's in terrible pain and you dread going to the dentist, right? Nobody likes it. I've never met a single person that loves going to the dentist. But you go. Why do you go? Because you have hope. There's the happy anticipation that when he's done drilling and poking and pulling and ripping your mouth apart your pain will stop, right? If you didn't have that, I guarantee you, you wouldn't go to the dentist. If you didn't have the happy expectation that he's going to do good, you wouldn't go put yourself through that for anything in the world. Right? "Oh, I just go to the dentist because I like coming back and feeling like someone stuck, you know, their whole foot in my mouth and pulled it apart. I like going because I like coming out talking like this. And slobbering all over the place. That's why I go to the dentist."

We have a happy expectation. Then after we come home an hour later it's like, "Oh wow, my tooth doesn't hurt anymore. And the Novocaine's worn off, and I can talk normal, and it's good. In our faith to God, and you can't have hope, remember, faith, hope and charity, faith, hope, and love here in 1 Corinthians 13 all has to do with spiritual, our spiritual relationship with God. You cannot have hope in God unless you have faith. There's an order in which he says these. If I have the happy expectation, the confidence, I can feel happy. I can feel good because I know the end result will be good. I must have faith for that to happen. So if I truly have faith, it leads to obedience. It leads to trust. If I have trust, what comes out of trust is I anticipate the good. This may be hard right now but it will work out for what's best because the Bible says all things work out for the good for those who love God. So since I love God, I believe all things will work out for the good. That's where we should be.

Now, I don't know about you, I have trouble being there sometimes. I know what it says, I have trouble being right at that point at sometimes. Other times, I'm there. And this happy anticipation of good, even in a difficult situation, because why? Well, I know this works out. God works this one out. The problem is sometimes when we don't know what God's will is and we're struggling to figure out what is what God wants. But other times we just we know what it is. So, okay, we will do what God wants. And we have this happy expectation of good. Hope is a positive, happy expectation of something. But I want you to notice Romans 8. And that will see why faith and hope are connected together. To have real hope, to be positive. Hope is in its very nature, it's positive. When you are hopeless, you are depressed, you are dejected, you are down. When you're hopeless, it's like, why even try? It's all hopeless.

When you have hope, you believe this will work out. Romans 8:22. Romans 8:22. Paul says here, "For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pains together until now." Not only that, but we also, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves, within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. He says, you know, we're eagerly looking forward to something. Even though the world around us might be falling apart at times, we are eagerly looking for something. We can be positive. We can look around and still find happiness every day, even in the problems that we face in life. How can we do that? Paul says, "For we were saved in this hope." We were saved in this positive expectation. We were saved in this anticipation of good. But hope that is seen is not hope. For why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.

Here's why faith and hope are tied together. Faith and hope all have to do with something you have not seen yet. Paul says, you know, you really hope... You know, you're 17 and you hope to get married someday. You really hope. You eagerly anticipate that. You believe it's going to happen. After you're married five years, you don't have to hope to get married. You're already married, right? You don't wake up and say, "Boy, I hope I get married today." You're already married. "I hope I get a job." You hope, you look, you work. You have eager anticipation because you believe you're going to get one. Hopelessness is when you don't believe you're going to get one. When you hope and you get one, the next day you go to work, you no longer hope to have a job. You have a job, right? That's the thing about hope, it's tied to faith. Faith is the trust and belief that says, "I will obey, I will carry out whatever price because I see it. It's substance in my life. It's the core of who I am. I believe these things as much as I believe anything. It is reality to me."

Hope is, therefore I expect it. I expect God to bring the kingdom. I expect God to help me through things. I expect God to take care of me. I expect God to do what's best for me, even when I don't understand. And therefore, I can be happy today. Things around me may be a mess, and I may feel stress and a little worry and some anxiety, but overall I can still be happy. I have hope. And then people say, "How can you hope in this? You don't even see it. How can you hope in your God to deliver you?" How many times in the Bible do you find someone believing in God and someone saying to that person, "Why do you have hope in God to deliver you? Where is He? I don't see Him. I don't see Him." "Why, I have faith in Him." "How can you have faith in someone you don't see?" I do, and because of that I hope. You hope? You're really nuts. Our country's falling apart. Why aren't you out there picketing in the streets, weeping and gnashing on your teeth and saying, "Our country's falling apart. Everything's going down. There is no hope." The reason you're not doing it is because your hope isn't in the United States of America. Your hope is in the Almighty God. And you know the United States of America will eventually fail just like every other human government has ever failed. You know that. And that's not your hope. If your hope is in this government, you're probably a pretty distressed person right now.

If your hope is in Almighty God, well, Christ will come and fix this someday. My job is to be Christ-like and to try to share this with anybody who will listen. That's your job. Hope. Hope. It's that positive emotion that says, "I do trust God, so why worry about it?" As long as you've done all you can do. Now we have to do what we're supposed to do. That's the thing about faith, at least obedience. So faith leads to action. After you've done your action, what you're supposed to do, then you can step back and say, "Okay God, I've done what I'm supposed to do. I'll just put it in your hands. You have to do the rest. I'll trust you'll do what's best. I'll trust you'll do what's best." So I have hope. I have hope.

Faith, hope. Faith, hope. It's interesting in Lamentations. I was going to read this, but I was thinking about reading it and I thought not to. I brought the Bible up anyways. So let's go to Lamentations 3. I'm going to read this from the NIV. Lamentations 3, Jeremiah is just distressed here. He has lost faith in God. He lost faith in God and because he lost faith in God, he lost his hope. And now he had nothing. And breaking into the middle of this he says in verse 13, "He pierced my heart." He's talking about damage the people has done to him with arrows from his quiver. "I became the laughing stock of all my people. They mocked me and saw me all day long." Jeremiah said, "You know what, God?" He said, "I told people to come follow you, and they made up songs about me. They sing about Jeremiah was a bullfrog." No, they sing about... Some of you are old enough to remember that song. They sing about Jeremiah the crazy man, Jeremiah the prophet, the guy they put down in the sewer to die. Because that's what they did to him. They dropped him in a sewer.

He said, "Is it this is what my life's become? He has filled me with bitter herbs and salted me with gall. He has broken my teeth with gravel. He has trampled me in the dust. I have been deprived of peace. I have forgotten what prosperity is." He says, "I've forgotten what it's like to live in a house, in a nice house, and you know, have a normal job." And he says, "I had faith in you and this is the way it turned out? And all I did was what you told me to do." Verse 19, "I remember my affliction and my wondering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember and my soul is cast down within me. And yet this I call to mind. Therefore, I have hope." He said, "Something in me changed." In the midst of this, I began to feel some positiveness in the midst of this. And I began, that's what hope is. Anticipation of good. You expect good to come out of this.

So I began to expect good to come out of this because, verse 22, "Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. And I say to myself, the Lord is my portion, therefore I will wait for Him. The Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seeks Him. And it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord." He got his faith back. I believe God saves me. I believe God works this out. I believe even if I die, I come up in the resurrection and God rewards me. Therefore, you know what, this turns out for the best no matter what. I'm okay. I find peace, I find hope because of God's faithfulness. See, he wasn't having faith in himself. He didn't have faith in his faith.

I think I mentioned this when I heard it a couple weeks ago. It just infuriated me. I was listening to some televangelist. He said, "I've never seen God ever respond to a person because they were in need. I've never seen God ever respond to somebody because they cried out to him. I've never seen God respond to anybody because they were crying. I've only seen God respond to people because they had faith." Wow. What a small God that man believes in. I believe God does whatever God wants to do because God is merciful, because God is love. I think God shows mercy on those who don't deserve mercy. I think God gives love to those who don't deserve love. I think God puts rain on the just and the unjust. I think God's a whole lot bigger than saying, "Sorry folks, I want to see you work up a little faith before I do something." I think God does whatever he wants to do. And that makes me have some hope that God doesn't always act on my faith.

That gives me a lot of hope. God's not always sitting there being held back by my lack of faith. Now, God's action in my life might be held back by my lack of faith. But God's responses aren't always based on my faith. So we have faith and hope, the motivations of life. We trust God, therefore we follow Him. We hope and anticipate His guidance. We hope and anticipate His good. We hope and anticipate His salvation.

So why is agape greater? How can that be greater? I skipped a verse in 1 Corinthians 13. Let's go back to 1 Corinthians 13. I skipped a verse and I did it on purpose. Verse 11. Faith, remember, faith is trust in something you do not yet see. Hope is anticipation of something you do not yet see. Right? Verse 11 here in 1 Corinthians 13, "When I was a child I spoke as a child. I understood as a child. I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things." It's only been the last few years that I put away childish things and actually realized that Paul knew what he was talking about in 1 Corinthians 13:13. Verse 12, "For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as also I am known." Who will you see face to face at the time of perfection? God. You'll see Jesus Christ and you'll see God the Father. You see, faith is in something not yet seen. Hope is in something not yet seen. Agape is seen. He looked in a mirror and he says, "I see dimly now." What is he seeing? What we have in the traits of agape is Jesus Christ. And he looked in a mirror and he saw in himself. And this, what is a mirror? What do you see in a mirror? Yourself. But when Paul looked in the mirror, he said, "Well, wait a minute. Part of that's not me." He saw something happening to himself.

The results of faith and hope are supposed to be agape. You see your faith in your agape. You see your hope in your agape. This is why we go back to James Lane, faith without works is dead. It's supposed to produce something. If we say we have faith and we say we have hope and we do not have agape, we have a problem with our faith and our hope. It is agape that is seen. That's why He says it's the greatest, because it's a product of the other two. Our trust in God leaves us a total commitment to God. That total commitment to God leads to God living in us. As God lives in us, we have hope in what He's doing. And as we have hope in what He's doing, He produces in us Jesus Christ. And we look in the mirror. And we say, "Oh, wait a minute, there's some kindness. That wasn't there before. We see it." How much of agape is in actions? We talked about that over and over again. It's in emotions, it's in thoughts, it's in actions. You see a thought, you think a thought you never had before. Faith, hope, agape, you see it, you see an action.

How many times have you seen somebody come into the church, watch and say, "Boy, that person doesn't get it. They're never going to come along." And five years later you say, "Boy, did they change." We saw God change that person. We saw God. We saw that person repent and we saw them change. And they became a different person. When that person looked into a mirror, they don't see themselves anymore. They see part of themselves, and they see part of Christ. What you're seeing is agape. That's why it's the greatest. Because those things produce it. If you don't have agape, we have a problem with our faith, and we have a problem with our hope. Faith, hope, agape. Faith is not seen because it's a faith in something unseen. Hope is not seen, it's a hope in something unseen. Agape is seen. Your faith will produce it because God will do it in you. And that's why it's the greatest. It's not because you can have agape without faith. It's because true faith will produce it, and it will be seen.

Your decisions will be decisions based on faith. You will be willing to say, make decisions that other people think you're crazy for doing. People think you're nuts for making certain decisions, but you do it because, no, it's what I must do. I must forgive that person No, you don't. You should have a vendetta against that person. You should hate that person. No, I must forgive that person. But that's a stupid decision. Where does that decision come from? Faith in God. Commitment to God, trust in God, hope that He is going to turn it out for the good, and agape is the product, and you see the agape. You don't see the faith and hope, you see the agape. So you forgive the person and everybody else around you says they see something I don't see. You must be crazy. People of faith have always thought it was crazy. Right? Because they see things others don't see. They see something other people do not see. Faith, hope produces it. It comes out from it. And it is seen.

It is seen by yourself and by others in the work of God. Not to have faith and never see any product, I don't know how you can live that way. You look at the Bible, God always gave encouragement, He always gave some answer to people. One of the answers is your conversion, your faith, you know, your hope, you know, because you see God in your life. Agape is faith and hope and action, an imitation of Jesus Christ. It is exhibited in our thoughts and our emotions, it's exhibited in our behavior. We have faith and hope in what we don't see. Agape is what we do see when we look in the spiritual mirror. It is the proof of faith and hope. I hope you can wrap your mind around that, because that is really, really important. That is really important.

So let's go back now. 1 Corinthians 13:1, where we started eight sermons ago. Paul says, "Though I speak with the tongues of men, and with angels, but have not agape, I have become a sounding brass or a clanging cymbal." I'm just someone blowing on a shofar with no, just a weird sound, or a child walking around clanging a cymbal, it doesn't mean anything. Gifts from God don't produce anything good unless, unless agape is part of it. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and though I have all faith, if I have all faith, I will please God. "Well," he says, "if I have enough faith to move mountains, if I have not agape, I am nothing." The proof of your faith is agape. The proof of your faith is looking in the mirror and seeing Jesus Christ reflected back. The proof of your faith is God in your life. You should see it. We see it.

And he says, "And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not agape, profits mean nothing." It doesn't mean anything unless they have all of it. Now, none of us have all of it yet. That's a discouraging comment. I don't mean it to sound that way. What he's saying is this is why we live life. This is every day's challenge. And we'll fail some every day. God doesn't. God's not keeping a report card on you. And every time you fail, uh-oh. God's saying, "Okay, learn from that one." Take the challenge. Become like Christ. Learn it. Live it. When you don't measure up, ask for forgiveness and measure up the next day. And then we know that agape suffers long, it is kind, it does not envy, it does not parade itself, it does not puffed up, it doesn't behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in the iniquity, but rejoices in the truth. And we went through every one of those attributes. So then Paul narrows it down to one sentence. Verse 13, "Now abides," these three things live on. These three things survive. Faith, hope, agape. These three. The greatest of these is agape.