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Hi, this is Pastor Tom Holliday, and we are starting today a study for the next
five days in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, one of the great chapters of the Bible,
one of the most familiar chapters in all of the Bible. It's called the Love
Chapter. It seems like you can hear all of it or a portion of it at almost any
wedding that you attend.

It's not only the Love Chapter, it is a well-loved chapter. Many people call it
their favorite chapter in all of the Bible. You can find this chapter or
portions of it on plaques and special collection books.

You can find it in people's list of favorite verses, of life verses, all because
of people's love for the impact that this particular portion of Scripture has in
their lives. Now, I just want to say from the beginning that sometimes our love,
1 Corinthians chapter what it has to say about love, causes us to focus so
closely on it that we sometimes lose the real message. So before we begin, let's
step back a moment.

Let's remember that 1 Corinthians 13 is sandwiched between 1 Corinthians chapter
12, which is about gifts and how they're to be used in the church, and 1
Corinthians chapter 14, which is also about gifts and how those gifts are to be
used in the church. So 1 Corinthians chapter 13, it can be applied to marriage,
it can be applied to friendship, it can be applied to every relationship in your
life. But first and foremost, it's about the relationships that we have with
each other in the church.

And in the church, in the body of Christ, the gifts that we have, how we use
those gifts, how we worship towards each other, it's to be governed by love. 1
Corinthians 13 is not an interruption in the discussion of gifts. 1 Corinthians
chapter 12, verse 31, Paul says, "Look, I want to show you the greater gift.

I want to show you a more excellent way. " So that reminds us that 1 Corinthians
13 is central to an understanding of gifts, of the greater gifts. What's Paul
talking about when he says, "I want to show you the greater gift"?

I think he's pointing to a different idea than just our diversity of abilities.
With these type of gifts, he's already told us that weaker gifts are really more
necessary. So what's the greater gift that we should desire?

He's speaking of the works which the Spirit needs to do in every one of our
lives. In 1 Corinthians 13, 13, when we get to the end of this chapter, we're
going to find that the greatest of these works are faith, hope, and love. You
might say that these are the character of the Spirit, which empower the
characteristics, the gifts of the Spirit in our lives.

Faith, hope, and love. Faith, hope, and love empower prophecy. Faith, hope, and
love empower miracles.

Faith, hope, and love empower helps. But the greatest of these, faith, hope, and
love, Paul says, is only one, and that is love. Paul lifts up one of these three
character traits of the Spirit, love.

The gifts are great, he says in chapter 12. Faith, hope, and love are greater,
he says at the end of chapter 13. And then he says, "By the way, love is the
greatest.

" So let's listen together as we walk through this chapter to what it has to
teach you and I about this greatest gift, the gift of love, beginning in chapter
13, verses one to three. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but
have not love, I'm only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the
gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a
faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but
have not love, I gain nothing. As Paul walks through this chapter, he's going to
talk about the priority of love, the characteristics of love, and the endurance
of love, the greatness of love. And he begins by talking about the priority of
love.

In order to love, you have to recognize the priority of love. Love is all
important, it's more important, the greatest of these is love. In order to love,
you must recognize in your life the priority of love, and Paul brings that out
here.

He helps us to understand the importance of love by speaking of its absence. He
says, "If I have all these words, speak with the tongues of men and of angels,
without love, it's just noise. " It's just a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal.

The highest sounding words a tongue can produce, it can sound like an angel's
words. They're just noise if they're spoken without love. Now Paul talks about
clanging cymbals here.

Many people think that those point to the noisemakers that were used in common
worship of the false gods. It's just false, he's saying. It might be loud, it
might bring a lot of notice, but it's false in the end.

It means nothing in the end. Words without love are just noise. And then he
talks about gifts without love, and he says they're nothing.

You can be a prophet, that's a gift. You can understand every word of scripture,
that's a gift. You can be able to move mountains with your faith, that's a gift.

By reading chapter 12, like we did last week, and now chapter 13, you see how
he's talking about the gifts that he talked about last week in this verse. The
gift of prophecy, the gift of teaching, the gift of faith, without love it means
absolutely nothing. In fact, the truth of the matter is, I've seen that it's
almost in many ways worse than nothing.

It's not just a zero, it's a negative. Prophecy without love actually turns
people away from God. Knowledge without love actually makes a person arrogant,
prideful.

Belief without love actually fills one with themselves instead of with the
spirit. Gifts without love, they're nothing, they're a zero. Words without love,
just noise.

Gifts without love, nothing. Sacrifice without love, no profit, Paul says. You
can sacrifice, he says, all your possessions.

You can give it all away. In fact, he says, you can deliver your body to be
burned. You can even sacrifice your very life, but without love, the greatest
sacrifice is an empty gesture.

Now, remember, in that day, sometimes there were those Christians who had to
give their life for their faith, they were martyred, and sometimes it was
through burning. Now, Paul may be talking about that here. He says, even if you
become a martyr for your faith, if it was without love, it does not mean
anything.

It doesn't count for anything. That's shocking to me, but Paul says it's the
love that matters. The reason that you made that sacrifice, not the sacrifice
that you made, but the reason that you made that sacrifice.

Some people make sacrifices out of pride, out of what they might get out of it,
the notice they might get. Other people make sacrifices out of fear of what God
might do to them if they don't make that sacrifice. Paul says it's the love that
brings the benefit.

He's talking in these verses about the priority of love. Why is it so important?
And you can tell, as we've read through these words without love, noise, gifts
without love, nothing, sacrifice without love, no profit.

You can tell it's very important to love. Why is it so important to recognize
the priority of love? Because if you don't recognize that priority, you will be
drawn into lesser priorities.

If you don't recognize that there's nothing more important than love, you'll be
drawn into the lesser priority of self, selfishness, or the lesser priorities of
some financial deal and how that can make me feel, or some hobby or some comfort
in your life. You'll chase after lesser priorities the rest of your life unless
you recognize the greater priority of love. Why?

Because the greater priority of love is the toughest one to chase. It takes
everything out of you. In fact, it takes the godly spirit of Jesus within you in
order to live out that priority.

And unless I recognize it, I will be tempted to live on my own energy, my own
strength, my own power, and to chase after things that just seem to make me
happy in the moment. But when I recognize if that's what I chase after, even if
they're spiritual things, even if they're great things, great sacrifices
according to this world, if that's what I chase after, it's a zero without love.
All of a sudden, I rewrite the books.

When you recognize the priority of love, there's nothing then to distract you
from the choice to love. Now, if you're like me, that's a lifetime process. It's
so easy to prioritize yourself.

It's so easy to prioritize what you want. If you're like me, you need God's
spirit, God's power for this one. So let's ask for it.

Instead of walking away from this study thinking, "I could never do that," let's
ask for what only God could do in our lives. Lord, you want us to recognize the
priority of love. You lived it.

You lived the priority of love by coming to this earth and dying for us. But you
did it not because you had to or not because you wanted us to applaud you, but
because you love. God so loved the world that He gave His only Son.

Lord, we see in you the priority of love. We see in these verses the priority of
love, and we want to live that priority, but we struggle with it. We struggle
with ourselves.

We struggle with our selfishness. So Lord, beginning with a recognition of the
priority of love, instead of us seeking to make this work on our own power,
right now we ask you to do something in us that we could not do on our own. Help
us to live out the priority of love.

Instead of turning to ourselves to live this out, we can't. We turn to you. Help
us to live this priority in our lives the only way we can, one day at a time.

Help me help us to live this priority today, we pray, Jesus. In your name, amen.
Tomorrow we're going to begin to look together at the character of love, the
actions of love.