The Church of Corinth

Thank you all very much. Mother, daughter, granddaughter, trio, and certainly words that all of us very much appreciate because of the importance of what Jesus said there in John 14. Very wonderful things to rehearse and think about as we enjoy our Sabbath service.

I think most of you, as you have been studying the Bible for many years, are familiar with some of the background to the book of 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians was a book that Paul wrote to the church there in Corinth. And in many ways, you find when you read through 1 Corinthians and you read through 2 Corinthians, what do you find? You find that this church was really having trouble. This congregation was really in a mess. Actually, you almost find a group that was almost in complete disarray. They were, maybe you could say on the verge of imploding. They had kind of public immorality that was pretty commonly known among almost everybody there. There was petty bickering. There was party politics. There were divisions. Members of the church were suing each other in court. And you actually find that the members were arguing over and struggling over, of all things, spiritual gifts. Now, this doesn't sound like a great congregation, does it? It sounds like a congregation that needs to be guided. And that's actually what you find Paul doing. Even though these different difficulties were listed there, and they're quite clearly defined, what you find is that this particular congregation with this type of division, this type of lack of understanding, this type of lack of perception, there was a reason, a very important reason, why they were that way.

And I want to be able to discuss with you how it is, or why it was, that they were that way. And of course, what Paul was encouraging them to do was to pull out of it, realize what causes these kind of problems, and then improve. And of course, that's clearly what all of us, I think, want to understand. If we look in chapter 3 of 1 Corinthians, it says in verse 1, So brethren, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh.

Here Paul is telling them, I could not come to you and talk to you as well-developed, spiritual, mature Christians. I see you, and I have to speak to you as people of the flesh, because in essence, you are simply infants in Jesus Christ.

And he says, I fed you with milk, not with solid food. For you were not ready for solid food. And even now, you are still not ready, for you're still of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling envy and strife and division, are you not behaving or are you not of the flesh and behaving according to human inclination? For one says, I belong to Paul, another says, I belong to Apollos. Is that not merely carnal?

See, Paul was pointing out to them the problems that Corinth was suffering, the problems that they were struggling with. Now, they were coming together, they were meeting, they were having some kind of church service, albeit when you read about some of them, you wonder what kind of a service it was. Because they were fighting and bickering, and some people were eating, and others were not being allowed to eat, problems that you wouldn't imagine.

And yet, what is it that Paul reveals here that leads to the type of difficulties, the type of problems that are very clearly defined here in the Corinthian church? Well, see, what it is, is that the people in this congregation, the people in this church of God, it was the church of God in Corinth. Primarily, Paul had worked with most of these folks, when you see back in Acts 16, he said, you know, I'm going to be in Corinth for a while, I'm actually going to be there for 18 months, because God has a number of people here. But see, these people, who were there in the congregation in Corinth, needed to grow up.

They needed to mature. They needed to develop spiritually. Because, he said, you're simply carnal, you're simply acting fleshly, whenever you are arguing and bickering, and whenever you are dividing yourself, and whenever you are following this minister or that minister, he said, is that not carnal? Is that not simply human, looking to human limitation, and not looking, as he points out here later in verse 11, to the real foundation.

To the foundation that every one of us, as a church member, as a member, as a recipient of the Holy Spirit, we have to be looking to the real head of the church. We have to be looking to Jesus Christ. He says, no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid, and that foundation is Jesus Christ. So, brethren, I certainly encourage all of us to look at that foundation, to keep our eyes on that foundation.

And yet, I think it's interesting for us to see, clearly, this congregation here in Corinth was not working together. They were actually pulling apart. They were not uniting and pulling together, as God, of course, wishes and wants for us to do. I'd like for us to look on over in chapter 12, because Paul told them not only that they are really just infants, and that they need to grow up.

They need to get over it. They need to grow up and become spiritually mature. Here in chapter 12, he says, in verse 1 concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I don't want you to be uninformed. And so, here he is talking to them about different spiritual gifts that God offers through the help of the Holy Spirit. And he explains, you know, what some of them are. Some of them dealt with languages.

Some of them dealt with tongues. Some of them dealt with, it says, prophecy. And I don't know that that necessarily meant, you know, like we think of, prophecy. But, you know, inspired preaching of some type. Some of them dealt with the gift of healing. Now, if somebody had the gift of healing, I'm pretty sure a lot of people would seek that person out. But would that person be a better Christian than this person over here who didn't happen to have that particular gift that all comes from God?

Well, they weren't cooperating very well. They were very partisan. They had a great deal of bickering. And actually, what they had was a great deal of competing with one another. And that's why they had the envy and the strife that was killing them. It was tearing them apart. And so here in chapter 12, right at the very end of this chapter, I'm not wanting to go through chapter 12, but here in chapter 12, at the very end of it, he says in verse 30, "...do all possess the gift of healing?" And of course, he was saying, well, no. There may be someone who has a gift of healing.

And I don't know exactly everything about that, except that's what it says. There apparently was someone that you might be able to go to and that they had an extraordinary ability to help people with healing.

But he says, does everyone possess the gift of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Can all interpret? And he was telling them, well, no. Not everyone has all of those particular unique gifts. But he says in verse 31, now this starts to apply to everybody. Everyone in the congregation in Corinth and everyone in the congregation here in Kansas City strive for the greater gifts. And so here he's going to explain some things that are even greater than tongues and prophecy and interpreting. He says strive for the greater gifts, and he says, I'm going to show you a more excellent way.

See, what is that more excellent way? What is the gift that God is asking and wanting all of us to thrive on? Well, if you drop down to chapter 13, all of you are familiar with it. All of us know that 1 Corinthians 13 is called the love chapter. We're all aware that it talks about the love of God, the way that God wants us to be. It actually is what Paul was telling the Corinthians, you are infants in Christ. You have all this bickering and strife, and you need to grow up. You need to become mature spiritually, and you need to reflect the love of God. Mr. Crosby talked about this. He explained numerous things that we do as we reach out, as we should reach out to others, as we should reflect the love of God and the light of Christ to other people. That's a part of what we should do if we're going to be spiritually mature. And 1 Corinthians 13 does describe this more excellent way. And I think you also would say that 1 Corinthians 13 describes God. It describes the way God is. It describes the way you can go over to John. I think it's 1 John, and it says, God is... We all know. God is love. That's 1 John 4.8, I believe. And yet here, you've got a whole chapter that describes how God is, and describes the quality, the characteristic, the outlook, the manner, many of the attitudes that define the way God is, and define this more excellent way. And see, brethren, each and every one of us have that love from God. We have that available to us. We have that available to us through the power of the Holy Spirit. But you know, I find that unless I focus on asking God to help me have, and I am starting to learn to ask God to help me have certain attributes that I clearly see I need, but that I have not really focused on asking God to help me have this quality of the way He is, or the way that Jesus Christ is. Because there are numerous things. When I measure myself against Jesus Christ, I need to do that because then I see how lowly I am. But I do want to do that because we want to keep that high standard. And God of course tells us, this is a more excellent way. This is the quality that you need to seek. And so here in 1 Corinthians 13, it's amazing to me that it describes what it is to be spiritually mature. And I think all of us should ask ourselves, well, just how mature is our love for one another? How mature is our love? Because that really is what God is wanting. He is wishing for each of us to grow up, and to get away from the things that damage, the things that pull down, the things that diminish our ability to go forward. He wants us to be spiritually powered by His Spirit, and yet the love of God is actually here in 1 Corinthians 13. It's always been a favorite chapter of mine, and I would imagine it is for you, at least in some ways, probably for any of us. I recall some of you remember Mrs. Elizabeth Adams, and before she died here this past year, or in the past six months or so, she died.

She had lived in a nursing home for seven or eight years. It was always a delight for me to go by and visit with her, even though she was very limited as far as her ability to talk. She could hardly verbalize things. She talked so softly that you could hardly hear her anyway. Of course, I'm over there trying to get my better ear. I'm always trying to figure out which one is my better ear. One of them has got to be better than the other one, but I can't tell exactly which one it is. But I'm always trying to hear what it was she had to say. In a fog of dementia, sometimes, even if I heard it, it didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Yet, anytime I would read to her the Bible, anytime I would read in Psalms or in John, the sections in John 14, 15, 16, those are familiar sections to us, her eyes would always light up. She'd always start to have a smile, and in some ways, she would start repeating or start even quoting what it was that I was saying because she was familiar with it. 1 Corinthians 13 was one of the same type of sections, because she was familiar with that. She had studied that. Even though we might not be able to carry on much of a conversation at all, we could certainly communicate about that very familiar section of Scripture.

It was always exciting to me to be able to see that, well, if I didn't make hardly any other connection, I think we connected over this section of the Bible. I'd also like to point out, if you turn back to Mark 12, Mark 12 does give us actually a very direct command.

All of us are familiar with the commandments of God. We're familiar with the Ten Commandments. We're familiar with the fact that they give us a way of life. They give us the guide for our life that we live, and we want to follow those commands. Yet here in Mark 12, we find a couple of commands that Jesus gave that in many ways just summarize the commandments that we're familiar with in the Old Testament. In verse 28, he says, One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, well, Master, or what commandment is the first of all?

And Jesus answered and said, well, the first is hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love. This is what he was telling them. The greatest commandment, the first commandment, is that you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. And the second command is this. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment that's greater than these. And so here you find an exchange with Jesus Christ where he pointed out that all of us, you'll need to grow in the love of God. All of us need to love God with all of our heart, and love one another, and love other people, our neighbor, as ourselves. We're directed by Jesus Christ to do that. And so I think studying what we find here in 1 Corinthians 13 is really very important. It actually was the answer that Paul was giving to the people living there in Corinth. He says, you're fighting and you're bickering, you're immature, you're infants, you have not yet grown up because you are not pursuing the excellent way that I describe here in 1 Corinthians 13. Now, he points out in the first three verses here of 1 Corinthians 13. If we go back there, 1 Corinthians 13 verse 1 through 3, what he points out is that the love of God and that love being given to us and then sent out from us, that love is more important than anything else. It says here, if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, and yet if I do not have the love of God, if I don't have love, then I am simply a noisy gong or a clanking cymbal.

What he points out there is that even if I could, and of course, some of the Corinthians were arguing over whether or not they could speak in this language or that language and whether they can interpret it, and he said that doesn't make any difference at all because whether you can speak all of the languages of men or even if you could speak the languages of angels, which I don't believe any of them could, but he says even if you could, if you don't have the love of God, if you don't have a love that comes from the Spirit of God, for God and for our fellow man, then you are simply nothing.

He goes on, and if I have prophetic power and if I understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can remove mountains, now I'd like to have that kind of faith.

And he's not saying that's wrong. He's saying that'd be okay. But even if you have all of that, and if you don't have love, then you again are simply nothing. He says if I could do these miraculous things, if I could do these amazing things, and if I don't have the love of God, then I am simply nothing. And he says if I give away all my possessions, now this is interesting because this is what Jesus told the young man who came to him, what do I have to do to have eternal lives? Give everything away. Give it to the poor.

He didn't want to do that, of course. He didn't want to make that type of a commitment. But Paul said, even if you didn't do that, give away all your possessions or even hand over your body to be burned, to offer yourself in sacrifice. He says, if you don't have the love of God, if you don't have love, if you are not growing in the love of God, if you are not growing in the attribute of the Spirit of God that is described here in this chapter.

And he says again, he says if I don't have that, then I gain absolutely nothing. And so, brethren, there is nothing more important. There is nothing more significant in a Christian's life than for us to be growing, for us to be maturing, for us to be developing in more and more of the love for God and love for our fellow man.

Now, when we look at verse 4 down through verse 8, you find a section here that technically describes the love of God. It describes the love that God wants us to have for each other.

And actually, it describes it listing several positive qualities that we want to seek and emulate. And it says, now there's a number of negative qualities, which we pretty easily do, but it says this is not the love of God. See, actually, 1 Corinthians 13, 4 through 8 would be a good memory section, because it would clearly delineate in our mind and in our thinking what God is, because He is love. And of course, he starts off, and I think it probably is interesting to see that the very first thing that is listed here is that love is patient. Love is long suffering. Now, why is that so hard? Well, all of us want to suffer short.

We don't want to suffer long. We want to suffer short. Every time I have any kind of a situation that is some type of difficulty, I would prefer that to be a short difficulty.

And yet, what we find pointed out here is that the love of God, love is long suffering. It is very, very patient. And actually, in some ways, and as he was describing this to the people there in Corinth who were fighting and bickering and arguing and who were divided over so many things, why was all of that happening? Well, because they were not patient. They were not suffering long.

And actually, what you find, this description here and this characteristic of God, is that, you know, it's the complete opposite of having a short fuse. You hear of people who have a short fuse.

That may be an accurate description of the way that person is, but that's certainly not a positive description. You know, that's a negative description. They've got a short fuse. They go off all this, you know, no matter what happens, they go off immediately. You know, that's completely opposite of what God is telling us He wants. You know, I think you could also say it's pretty much the opposite of anger. You know, if we get angry, then more than likely, the chances of something going haywire are greater than if we are patient and long suffering and asking that God will help us endure and help us be able to manage the situation in a far more favorable situation.

Retaliation. See, what's retaliation is hitting back, and that, of course, is something that Christ chose not to do, even when He was suffering, even when He was put to the greatest test.

Now, when people were going to spit on Him and they were going to hit Him, and they were going to abuse Him, ultimately, you find later that He says, I just am not going to answer back. I am not going to retaliate. See, this is what the love of God is about. And so, whenever you read that the love that He wants us to grow in is long suffering, I think it's good for us to remember that. The second thing that's mentioned is that love is kind. Love is kind. And again, that sounds rather simple to do. I think all of you are pretty kind toward me almost every time I see you. You're kind.

And yet, are we kind all of the time? Well, we're kind some of the time. I'm kind some of the time.

I'm not kind all the time. You can ask my wife, because I might say something, or I might, if she says something, that I might say something, I may fuel a argument, because I wasn't kind.

And actually, she can say something, and then look at me and know from my face what I'm thinking, and knows that I'm not kind, or knows that I'm thinking something completely different.

It is very easy for us, I think it's very easy for us as human beings, to not be kind.

And yet, another definition of kind here, and it says, love is long suffering and love is kind.

A person who is kind is going to show oneself to be useful. They're going to reach out to benefit someone else. Show yourself to be useful. Now, we can describe that in a lot of different ways, but that's actually a way of being kind. We're being useful to someone else. I think of a man that I knew actually 40 years ago, up in the Portland area, and I think of a man this particular man stands out in my mind to this day, because he was very, very outgoing, he was very effervescent, he was very encouraging, he was uplifting, but he was really kind. Because if there was something that I was trying to learn to do, and clearly there were many things that I didn't know that I needed to learn at that point, he never did put me down for, you know, how come you don't know that, or surely you should know that, and haven't you already learned that? No, he would just show me what it was that I needed to do, or help me, or if it was even learning something, like learning... I remember he was actually a very good golfer. He could play golf very well, and I thought, surely he doesn't want to take me, because we'll be looking for the ball all day long, because I don't have any idea how to hit it, even where you can find it.

And yet he would tell me, he would tell me, no, it doesn't make any difference. You'll get better.

You know, I can show you. I will help you. I will... you know, he was just being really, really kind.

And I would be a laborer for him, I'm sure, to have to put up with me if I was going through, you know, that type of activity. But he was... he stands out in my mind as being extremely, extremely kind. And of course, what he was doing was, he was not thinking, well, what can I get out of this situation? I had nothing to offer. There wasn't anything I could give him. And yet, he was thinking, well, how can I benefit somebody else? He knew how to do something. He could show me. He could help me. And that type of kindness is what we find here. Love is patient and love is kind. It starts then to go through a number of things that love is not. Now, the Corinthians were really good at most of these things. And of course, that's why Paul was pointing this out. This is the more excellent way. This is the way that you want to overcome. This is the way that you have got to put aside and learn to live with God's love just exuding from you. It says, Love is patient and kind, and yet love is not what you are currently doing. Love is not envious. Why is love not envious? See, we can all know, and we can read the works of the flesh, and we know that some of those are jealousy and envy and strife. See, that's exactly, he's saying the opposite here. Love is not envious because envy only leads to making comparisons and making judgments in many ways that we may not be able to accurately make. And actually, what it leads to is looking at other people, evaluating, they either look better or they have better things, or they have this or that, this talent or that talent that I don't have. And so, that makes me feel bad, or I wish I had that. Actually, in many ways, you see the Corinthians, they were truly arguing, they were very envious of each other over the spiritual gifts that God had given them.

And clearly, that was not something that Paul wanted them to do. And actually, what they were doing in being envious in this way, it was creating a competitive attitude, a competitive spirit among the people. And so, Paul is really succinctly pointing out, love is long-suffering and patient, but love is not envious. It is not boastful, and it is not arrogant, puffed up, not parading itself, I think is what the King James says.

See, those are inner qualities that are very common with people, as far as people in general. And certainly, you know, our human nature can identify with all of those. And yet, it points out that love is not envious, boastful, arrogant, or rude.

Now, are any of us rude at any time? Well, most of the time, again, we're not. Most of the time here at church, we're not, anyway. But are we rude at any other time? I think what this is indicating is that it's behaving rudely. Whenever we are rude, we're actually showing an insensitivity to the feeling of others. We're showing that we don't really care about what's somebody else, whether they might be hurt, whether they might be damaged in any way by what we say or what we do. But that's why this description of the love of God, it is patient and kind, but it is not envious, and boastful, and arrogant, and rude. It does not insist on its own way. It does not seek its own.

Now, that again strikes right at our heart, because often we do seek our own. We do seek what we want before the good of others. But it says it does not seek its own.

And it goes on to say it is not provoked or easily provoked, and it thinks no evil.

Now, again, you can read that and say, okay, what does that have to do with what Paul was telling the Corinthians? Again, we want to know they were there arguing among themselves. They were there fighting and striving for a preeminence. They were wanting to say, I'm better than you.

They were wanting. They were envious of each other. You know, they certainly were arrogant about the way they were going about doing it. They were demanding their own way. Here he's telling them, the love of God does not allow you to be that way. You want to learn to not seek your own, but to look out for someone else. You know, we read those other verses that talk about looking out for the benefit and the good of others. Not easily provoked or easily angered. See, that's what they were. They were angered easily. They were in conflict. They were in strife. See, the love of God is not irritable or provoked, and then not resentful, not thinking evil of someone else. And again, I think we could perhaps identify that as being more of a keeping a record of wrongs. See, that's what thinking no evil is. See, if we hold grudges against people, we remember that they did this or they did that. We keep that in our back pocket, just in case we might need it, with our relationships with someone else. See, that's thinking evil. Thinking no evil is what the love of God is wanting us to pursue. And so, all of these, this listing that we have here, it really is, you know, it points out that there's got to be a different focus. It's not just about me. See, when you see all these negative things, the envy, the boastfulness, the arrogance, the rudeness, demanding our own way, being irritated, being resentful, those are all things that are focused on me. And the love of God is others focused. Not selfish, but how can we serve? How can we respect? How can we reach out to others with the truth of God? Is it good enough that I have the truth, or that you have the truth?

Or should I not, really, with the love of God, want others to also benefit from that information, that knowledge, that closeness to our Heavenly Father and to our Savior, Jesus Christ?

Should that not be a concern that we have? And of course, that is our motivation, that is our concern as we preach the Gospel, as we have the, you know, a telecast that reaches 1200-some people this past, you know, one of the weekends. I want every one of those people to respond. I want them to learn something. I want them to become aware of their obligations before God. But of course, I don't see most of those folks, but I can pray about them. I can pray that God would open their mind. I can pray that God would grant them repentance. I can pray that He would bring them to an awareness of their need to respond to God, just like He did me, just like He is continuing to do with each of us. Verse 6 goes on. It says, the love of God does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. See, I think that's connected as well with not, again, just simply knowing the truth, but wishing to preach the Gospel, wishing to extend the truth to others.

You know, we have a vast array of information available as far as booklets. Information that, if people only, you know, if they wanted to know, if they wanted information, we've got a lot of stuff available. And as we interact with others, verse 7 says, the love of God bears all things.

It believes all things. It hopes all things. It endures all things.

See, now again, that's a very easy statement to say, and one that, you know, you can memorize and be able to state. But what Paul was pointing out is that, you infant Corinthians, here in this congregation, who are arguing and bickering among yourselves, you're not bearing with one another.

You're not believing in supporting and encouraging faith in one another. You're actually pulling each other down and pulling each other apart. He says, you're not promoting hope, which is what we all want to do. I want to be a positive influence to push hope before everyone that I come in contact with. That's what I think he's saying that he wanted to do and that each of us should want to do. That God will work good in our lives. And of course, it mentions enduring.

And of course, that's a kind of a stick-to-it-ness type of thing that God would change our lives. See, that's a part of the type of life that God wants us to live. And of course, in verse 8, he says, love simply does not fail. He says, this is absolute assurance. This is a guaranteed love does not fail. It never ends. He actually was pointing out a number of physical things, like he pointed out that they have a gift of maybe prophecy or tongues or interpretation or healing. He says, those are all physical things. Love of God and love of God being shed abroad in our hearts toward others, it never fails. It actually describes the way that God is. See, love, if it is not going to fail, if it's never going to end, then it is eternal.

See, love was in existence with God the Father and with the Word before they decided to create anything else. Love existed. Peace existed. Cooperation existed. And it's going to go on forever into eternity as we look into the future. So, I think it's important you go on in verse 8, as for prophecy, it's going to come to an end. For tongues, it's going to cease. For knowledge, that's going to stop. But he says, love will never fail. He said, that's why it's the more excellent way. It's why it's the quality that God wants us to seek. He wants us to ask for it. He wants us to live with the love of God in our lives and heart. He says in verse 9 that we know only in part and we prophesy in part, but when the complete does come, the partial will come to an end. And here he says, when I was a child in verse 11, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. But when I became an adult, I put an end to those childish ways. He uses a couple of analogies of being an infant and yet seeing that I need to mature. Seeing that I need to develop and grow and be mature. A mature Christian who allows the love of God to flow out from us. See, God has given us the spirit that empowers and enables us to do that. But if we are not nurturing that, if we are not expressing that in our relationships with others, well then I think we should. We should ask that God would help us to mature in that way. He uses another analogy in verse 12. For right now we see in a mirror dimly or darkly or in a glass darkly. But now, or within, we will cease face to face. Now I know only in part, but then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. See, as we ultimately are a part of the Kingdom of God, as we ultimately are fully mature, fully grown up, well then we're going to be able to see things as God does. Right now we see in part, right now we're in the developmental stages, yes.

But we don't want to be in the infantile stage like the people in Corinth were, where they were allowing division and strife, envy and bickering to consume them. That's what they were allowing.

And Paul says the excellent way is the way of the love of God. And I want you, I want you to seek, I want you to strive for this greater gift. And actually he says in chapter 12, strive for the greater gifts. And he actually is talking about love being the excellent way, and yet he also says in the last verse of chapter 13, these excellent gifts or these greater gifts are faith and hope and love. It says these three do abide. They are qualities that God has that He is extending to us through the help and the power of the Holy Spirit.

He says faith and hope and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these, the greatest of the qualities that He wants us to exemplify. And if we exemplify that, then I think most of the others would kind of fall in line is love. See, it's fabulous to think about that. That should be the greatest motivation for all of us as we go forward in our Christian lives to be able to recognize our need for the love of God to be thriving in our lives.

And then, you know, all of us pulling together, all of us unitedly achieving the work that God has given us to do. See, growing in a maturity of the love of God is what Paul was encouraging the Corinthians to do. And I think when we really see what God is doing, when we really mature in an even greater and greater way, that we're going to see that it's not so much about me. See, all the negative things that are listed here are kind of the way I am or the way that my nature would normally be.

But whenever I come to see how it is that I can have the love of God, it's not about me. It's about what God is able to give me. It's about what God is able to do through me and through you and through us as a group to be able, you know, to reach out to this world and be able to serve and truly benefit other people.

I'd like to go back to Mark 12 here in conclusion. In Mark 12, we read the statement that Jesus made that we are to love God with all of our heart. It clearly ties together with the sermonette that we heard today. And we are to love our fellow man. And to pick it up, here after this statement of Jesus, he says there's no other commandment greater than these.

And the scribe said to him in verse 32 of Mark 12, you are right, teacher. You have truly said that he is one and beside him there is no other. And to love him with all your heart and with all your understanding, with all your strength, to love one's neighbor as oneself, this is much more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. See, even this scribe could see, you know, that's far better, that's far more important, that's far more significant than any of the physical things that we're wrapped up in doing. This spiritual development, this spiritual quality is far more important than anything.

And Jesus answered him when he saw how he recognized that, well, yeah, this is what I'm talking about. This is a premier quality to seek, to love God and to love our fellow man. And of course, you know, we've studied here in 1 Corinthians how the love of God is a certain way, and it is not the way of carnality and the way of fighting and bickering.

Jesus saw that he answered him wisely. He said to that man, you are not far from the kingdom of God. See, now, I don't know that that man perceived what it was that Jesus was telling him. And I think, maybe, you know, different explanations of what that means might indicate, you know, he was talking about himself. Of course, he is the king of the kingdom. That would be one explanation. But I think even more importantly, he was telling them, if you really understood what I'm telling you to love God and to love your fellow man with the love that comes from God, doing that in an inclusive, doing that in an accepting, doing that in an uplifting way, then you are very close.

You are very close to the way the kingdom of God is. The way the kingdom of God will be as we, of course, yearn for that day to come, as we pray for that from day to day. So I want to encourage all of us, brethren, to allow the love of God to be shed abroad in our hearts. Romans 5.5 says that the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit that He has given us.

I want us all to realize how important that is, how excellent that is, how great that quality is, and how closely that ties directly together with what Jesus Christ not only did, but what He said that we should do. Because if we exemplify that love, then we will truly be the lights to the world. We will truly be the servants and the messengers of God that He wants us to be. And so I'm going to ask you to ask God, ask God to provide that love from Him to your heart in order to cause His mature love to shine forth in your life.

That's something that I certainly want to pray about, that I want to ask God to help me do.

I think everyone who's a part of the church should do that and needs to be doing that.

I think it's something that each and every one of us need to be and can be doing, and certainly we can exemplify what it says in 1 Corinthians 13, if that's a focal point in our mind. Not strife, but quality of love, quality of togetherness, quality of unity that comes from God and His Spirit.