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Welcome to studies with Stearman. Join us as we look deeper into the Bible. Strengthen your faith with us, even as we see the day approaching. And now here's Gary. We've all read First Corinthians 13. Charity, that is love suffers long. It's kind, it envies not. It does not push itself forward, it does not puff itself up. Love does not behave itself in an unseemly manner. Love does not seek its own things. It's not easily provoked. It doesn't think evil, it doesn't rejoice in iniquity. It rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. It never fails. And of course, when you read those words, you think, oops, I don't match up to that at all. There's just no way I meet that description. Right, well, we're going to study those words in depth today. Last week we had looked at the gifts of the Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12 and sort of lightly covered those, because what we're going to do is look back on them in depth and detail. When we come to 1 Corinthians 14, when. Which talks about the exercise of the gifts of the Spirit at that time, we're going to come back and re examine First Corinthians 12 in more detail. Now, 1 Corinthians 12 ends with a discourse on the body of Christ. We looked at that a little bit last week. I'm going to review it in a very light sort of a way, and then we're going to come back and revisit it a little bit later for reasons which will become apparent at that time. But the idea of the church as the body of Christ is an idea specifically given to the apostle Paul. None of the other apostles had this revelation given to them. And we have to look back and remember that Peter and the others, this discrete body of people, founded the church on Pentecost, and they were given a particular kind of mission which Paul set out to destroy. The Bible describes him as a sort of a beast who was trying to tear up the church. You can imagine that Here are the 12 apostles. The new church founded in Jerusalem. It spreads to Judea and Samaria, and then it begins to spread beyond Samaria into Aramae, Asia Minor. And here's Paul. He's going out with letters from the high priest and. And his goal is to rip the church apart and to kill it. Paul is a Pharisee. He's a genius. He's what the Jews would Call Gayon Rabboni Gayon. He's one of the top men trying to rip the Church limb from limb from limb and destroy it. And I'm convinced that he presided over the deaths of many Christians. This is the Apostle Paul that we study in First Corinthians. This is the Apostle Paul whose work ended up being the foundation of the Church. The very man who tried to destroy the Church. Go figure. The Lord is great, right? He acts far beyond our wildest understanding and our wildest imagination. The Lord is doing things that we can't even grasp. Why would he pick this man? So to Paul, personally taught by the risen Christ, was given this message of the body of Christ. He says, the body is many members. It has a hand, it has a foot, it has a leg, an arm, it has a head, it has an eye and an ear and all these different parts of the body. And as he ends 1st Corinthians 12, we looked at this last week. He makes a very logical a point that's so logical and so easy to understand that you almost overlook it. The body needs all its members, and they need to function together in order for the body to be healthy. And there are very attractive parts of the body, says Paul. And there are very unattractive parts of the body. There are some attractive parts of the body that do very attractive things. There are some parts of the body that we don't talk about all the time and that are equally necessary to the functioning of the body. And it's the same in the church. But the body must smoothly function, and this is his message. I'm going to start in 1st Corinthians 12:24 as we transition into the 13th chapter. He says, for our comely parts or our attractive parts have no need. But God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honor to that part which lacked said that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another. The members of the body are supposed to have the same care for one another as our body takes care of itself. You know, if the finger touches something hot, something really hot, it's not just the finger that draws back, it's the whole body. You'll just jerk back bodily to save that finger. The whole body reacts together, if you will, in love. That is total devotion. The body is devoted to keeping itself. And this figure of the body of Christ is, you would think, metaphysical. It's a spiritual idea, and certainly it is that. But it's also a physical idea. It works Very well in the physical realm. Ephesians 4. 4. There is one body. Now, the book of Ephesians is Paul's definitive epistle concerning the Church. And he says here, there's one body, one Spirit, even as you're called in, one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, and Father of all, who is above all, through all, and in you all. Remember when Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane the night that they arrested him? He prayed to the Lord and he said, lord, make us one body of people. I in them and thou in me. This truth is far beyond human understanding. It is the truth of the body of Christ. But you will never understand it in this lifetime, I guarantee it. I don't understand it. I don't understand how he's in me and I'm in Him, and I'm in the Father, and, you know, the Son's in me, and the Son's in the Father, and the Spirit's in me, and the Spirit's in me, and spirits in the Father. I don't understand all of that interworking. It's happening right now, even as we speak. And Paul speaks about it quite often. I don't understand how it works, and certainly I don't always see it working. When I am befuddled by the daily duties of my life, I'll go about frustrated. I get anxious, I get angry occasionally, I get short. I get frustrated. I stumble and fall and mutter and jam my finger in a door and say something in an expletive nature, say, lord, forgive me. I'm getting that under control the older I get. No, I'm not really. I still scream when I close my finger in a door. I mean, I'm a human being. And in spite of all my shortcomings and failings, I am in Christ and he's in me. 24 7. And there are these seven things mentioned in Ephesians 4, 4, 6. There's one body, one Spirit, one hope of the calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, through all, and in you, all that is inclusively. And he's speaking to the Church here. If you flip over to Colossians 1:18, you get the same idea, except that it's a different context. Colossians 1, starting at about verse 15, speaking about Christ's preeminency throughout creation, who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. For by him were all things created that are in heaven, that are in earth, visible and Invisible. Whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things are created by him and for Him. And he is before all things and by him all things consist. And he's the head of the body, the church. So the church, the called out body of believers, is the same thing as Christ. We're inseparable from Him. And the most difficult part of life is that you go around every day feeling separated from Him. Right? You do? I do. Every now and then you feel like you're just on your own. Lord, why did you throw me out here to flounder like this? That's the feeling you have. But the reality is he is in you and you're in Him. And that never changes. Faith is the ability to perceive and cultivate that reality. He's the head of the body, the Church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he might have the preeminence, the body. Before we go back to 1 Corinthians, look at Colossians 1:22. We have been reconciled. Verse 22. In the body of his flesh through death, present you, that is us, holy and unblameable and unreprovable in his sight. Do you feel holy, unblamable and unreprovable? Not really. Be honest now. There are some people in here who may feel holy and unblameable and unreprovable. I won't mention any names. No, I. Because the human condition is that once we are saved, once we're safe in Christ, we spend the rest of our lives understanding that salvation in the knowledge that we'll never fully understand it, nor will we fully feel it, if you know what I mean. In the sense that we live in constant, perfect exaltation without ever a slip or a stumble or a moment of darkness. Right? I don't live that way. Do you live that way? No. That's Christianity. And this is why Paul wrote all those letters, because he wanted people to understand the truth about their condition, even though the truth may not produce perfection in this lifetime. So you go back now to 1 Corinthians 12:12, 26. And whether 1 member suffer, all the members suffer with it. Or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now, ye are the body of Christ and members in particular. And God hath set some in the church first. Apostles. And my definition of an apostle is an apostle is someone who was sent directly by God. Apostolos in the Greek means to send someone as an ambassador. And to me, the apostles were 12 in number, plus Paul, who tried to destroy the 12 before he was converted first. Apostles, secondarily. Prophets. There were many prophets in the early church. There are many prophets today. A prophet is someone who is able to discern the word of God in the context of the times or in the context of culture and society, to apply the Word specifically. When you say prophet in this day and age, I don't think that a prophet is an independent, freelance sort of a guy who goes out speaking God's word. Thus saith the Lord. He appeared in my bedroom last night and he brings this message to you. I don't think that the prophets in our age are operating that way. I think the prophets in our age have the complete canon of Scripture, and through it they are able to prophesy. Next gift teachers. A teacher is someone who is able to make clear the principles of Scripture without adding any of his own personal thoughts or preferences in the matter, or using Scripture to build his own personal empire. A teacher must be, I think, absolutely objective, able to separate himself from the Word and simply allowing himself to disappear so that the Word may be magnified. A good teacher disappears and magnifies the Word. You're not looking at the teacher, you're looking at the Word as brought out by the teacher. Teaching gift, then, is to clarify after that, miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues or languages. Again, when we get to 1 Corinthians 14, we're going to go back through and look in great detail at all these gifts, because Paul talks about how they should be practiced in 1 Corinthians 14. But you'll notice that the gift of miracles is mentioned here. This is the gift of the exercise of the power of the Lord. Do we see miracles today? Yes, we do. Absolutely. We've all seen miracles of God. We see miracles. Yeah, we do. They are not sign miracles. That is to say, they are not miracles designed to draw great crowds. I have seen miraculous answers to prayer, and usually it happens in a very quiet context in the presence of a very few people. Sometimes one or two people may know about a miracle, and that's enough. There will be the experience of a healing. There will be the experience of a particular kind of blessing, maybe a financial blessing, perhaps a blessing in terms of family, friends, relationships. All kinds of miracles happen in the days of the apostles. Miracles were given specifically from the period of about AD 30 until about perhaps the latest recorded miracles were around AD 85 or so. But certainly by AD 70, the miracles had dramatically diminished. In the early church, there was a burst of miraculous power from about AD 30 until about the destruction of the temple. The church literally exploded throughout the Roman Empire because of those miracles. And many of them are recorded by Roman historians and, by the way, stoutly denied. The same historians who say such and such a thing happened, say, well, it was just superstition or rumor. Miracles happen. You know it and I know it. Gifts of healings. Healings happen. We've seen those gifts of healings in this church, in this little congregation. Helps, aids, sustenance. That's a gift. You ever help anybody who needs help because you've been prompted by the spirit to do so, that's a gift. Government administration. There are some people who are good administrators, and there are some who are not. And that gift is desperately needed in many, many cases. Take the example of Billy Graham. Whatever you may think about the Billy Graham organization over the years, a lot of pros and cons written about the Billy Graham organization, But if you look at their track record, you look at what Billy Graham did, and then you stop and think, he could not have done that without a vast organization. He had an organization second to none of people who would go out in advance and procure meeting areas, ushers, helpers, drivers, supplies, everything that would be needed for a large meeting. And he would do that nationwide, sometimes worldwide. And there would be literally hundreds of administrators in that organization. There are other Christian organizations that have administrators. That's what this word governments is driving at. And then different kinds of languages, diversities of tongues. What would these diversities of tongues be? Different kinds of languages. That's basically all that's being said here. Tongues. Glossos in the Greek simply means language. This world has. How many languages would you guess? And dialects? Well, they number in the thousands. Literally, in the days of the apostles, there were no Wycliffe Bible translators. And the signed gifts of being able to go and speak in the language native to that country was absolutely necessary. As the church became organized through the Middle Ages, it became a Latin church, if you will, the church of the Holy Roman Empire. The western division was founded in Latin, the eastern division in Greek. Say what you will about the Holy Roman Empire, the word was preserved in Latin. Later on in the 19th century, and moving on into the 20th century, the Lord expanded the ability of people to address cultures who spoke other languages. That's a gift. The gift of languages sometimes miraculously practiced. There are many stories of missionaries who have been divinely empowered to speak the languages of others as the need arose. For the most part, the gift of languages is known today in translation. Some people have the gift of translation, some don't. And I think the Lord gifted and raised up people to do this. The point is, we're not talking about something spooky here. Not talking about hocus pocus. We're talking about the well being of the body of Christ. That is to say, giftedness that preserves the unity of the body. And by the way, again, I want to say that we'll revisit these gifts when we go through 1 Corinthians 14, because it's there that Paul really defines the working of the gifts. But today we're going to go through 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter, so called. Everybody's read this chapter. Some people have memorized the whole chapter. It's a fairly important chapter. It is meaningful in ways that you can hardly imagine. Because the ultimate gift, in my opinion, is love. It's the thing that everybody talks about, you know, love makes the world go around. Love, sweet love. Love is all you need. All you need is love. The Beatles famous classic hit, all you need is love. You know, everybody talks about love, but you know, the one thing that's missing from the public dialogue, if you hear someone stand up and comment on society, culture, politics, and a politician will usually stand up and he'll say, we got a new program here that is only going to cost $45 billion the first year and it's going to help the children. And I feel a real need to help the children because the children need help and we need your $40 billion. And what's he doing when he does that? He's asking you to believe that he loves these children so that you'll be then persuaded to give up some of your hard earned cash in this new government program. Right. He's speaking as someone who is exercising love. Now, he wouldn't use the word, but he's saying we need to help the children. And assumed in that idea is love. Okay, but I want to tell you, love's not there. That politician, Senator Jack S. Foggbound, or whatever his name may be, is not in love with those children. He's in love with the idea of setting up a personal dynasty and getting his cut of the $40 billion. I gotta tell you, sad but true love is missing from modern social and political discourse. It's the missing idea what is substituted for love. When people stand up and talk about making sure that everybody is included, everybody gets his right. That's what you have to say when you get up and talk to a bunch of people. Well, what you substitute in the public discourse for love is fairness. Why? Everybody knows that this world is just a. Well, it's just kind of a lottery. Life is a lottery. And some people are lucky in the lottery of life, and some people are unlucky in the lottery of life. And those unlucky ones need to be helped out. And so we're going to take some of the wealth from the lucky ones and we're going to give it to the ones who are not lucky in life's lottery. Now, did I find that in the Bible? No, I did not. That's not the biblical view of life at all. Because if you have the lottery view of life, some are born lucky and some are born unlucky. That leaves God out totally. God's not there. Life is not a lottery. Life is a purposeful pattern created by God for an end. And we all read the end of the book and we know what the end is going to be. It's not a lottery. You were not born by chance and hung out to dry so that you need the state to help you get on your feet. But the state wants to tell you that it loves you. That's what the state would have you believe. It loves you. Uh, you're not going to find love there at all. In the body of Christ, however, the central feature is love. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity, I am become a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. In the King James, the word charity is the way they translated the Greek word agape. In the Greek language, agape is transcendental love. It is the highest kind of love you can think of in secular Greek. Periclean Greece, say around 600 BC, when the Greeks were writing drama, when the Greeks were writing cultural and social history, they commented on the word agape. Several of their writers, Hesiod in particular, noted that the word agape should never be used really in common language, he says, because he's never seen an example of it. He says, in Greek society, it just doesn't happen. Agape is the love of the gods, he said, and you don't see it on planet Earth. So there are other Greek words for love. Eros, which is sensual love, phileo, which is affection, storge, which is the love of family, close family. There are those Greek words for love. But the word agape is a high, high form. It means a love that absolutely has perfected thinking of others and not of itself. That's what agape is. And that's why the translators of the King James Bible didn't put the word love in there. They put the word charity in there because charity is the idea of love in motion, love giving to something or someone else. Love is a transitive verb. All you grammarians out there know what a transitive verb is. It needs an object. A transitive verb needs an object. You say, let's just take a sentence. They fought the whole gang. Talking about this thing that happened. They fought the whole gang. Fought is a verb. And the object of that verb is the whole gang. They fought the whole gang. He was given a book. He is the subject. Was given is the verb. A book is the object. So the verb is transitive. It transfers, transmits its intent to an object. Love is a transitive verb as used in the Bible. Love is always a verb that is transmitting something to someone else. It needs an object in order to fully realize itself, to complete its meaning. It has to have an object. Think about Jesus, the love of Jesus, and think about the object of his love. You are the object of his love. He died for you in order that you might have life. That's the transitive verb. He died for you. He is a subject. Died is the verb, for you, the object. Love is a transitive verb. Though I speak with the tongues, that is the languages of man and of angels. And here we're talking about, I think, the highest form of speech you can think of. Imagine that you could convey and express the highest ideals, the most complicated ideas, the most complicated things in the universe, and speak them with great clarity and force. That's what he's talking about. He says, even if I have that, all of that, if I can stand up and move the masses with my speech, and I don't have love, I'm just like a sounding brass, like clashing cymbals or a tinkling symbol. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains and have not love, I'm nothing. Love. Now, let's stop and talk about this chapter for a minute. This is the 13th chapter of First Corinthians. How many verses does it have? It has 13. Ooh, spooky. Was it written on a Friday? I don't know. 13th. You know, there's something interesting about the number 13 in the Bible. E.W. bullinger, writing in 1892, said, as to the significance of the number 13. All are aware that it has come down to us as a number of ill omen. Many superstitions cluster around 13. And there are various explanations concerning the number 13. And he goes on to say, as he studied the number 13 as it appears in the Bible, he says, and I quote, every occurrence of the number 13, and likewise every multiple of it stamps that with which it stands in connection with rebellion, apostasy, defection, corruption, disintegration, revolution, or some kindred idea. The number 13 is a biblical number of rebellion and curse always associated with that. The first place it's used in The Bible, Genesis 4:14, has to do with the relationship between Lot, Abraham and the Gentile. Kings 12 years, it says they served Kedorlaomer, and in the 13th year they rebelled. Well, that's the first place you find the number 13 overtly listed in the Bible. And you can just go on time after time after time and look up the number 13. You'll find that it's always associated with something disastrous. Hence, the Jews for thousands of years have thought that the number 13 is a curse. It's in their writings, and it's unlucky. And it comes down to us, like Friday the 13th. You know, everybody kids about that. But still there's the idea. In Genesis 17, you find the example of Ishmael, who was circumcised at 13 and brought into the covenant at that time, and he became a what, a rebel? He became an apostate. His offspring were corrupt. Well, you can just go on and on and on like this and find 13 as a curse. And so today we're studying First Corinthians 13, which has 13 verses. And what's it about? Love. You know, Jesus told his disciples to love one another. He says, love one another. And they went out and they taught that that phrase, love one another. You've all heard that phrase, right? Guess how many times that occurs in the New Testament if you look it up, I know you're ahead of me. It's 13 times 13. Why would that be in there? 13 times the unlucky number. Why would that be in the Bible? Thirteen times Jesus said in John 13:34, A new commandment I give you that you love one another. John 13. Interesting. That just makes me want to turn back to John. And I turn back here to John 13. And the very first verse of John 13 says, now before the feast of Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come, that he should depart out of this world unto the Father having loved his own, which were in the world. He loved them unto the end. He loved them unto the end. In other words, he loved These people as given in John 13, one to death, he loved them to the point of dying for them he was made sin for us. He was numbered with the transgressors. He became sin for us, if you will. He became the number 13. As strange as that sounds, the Bible is an amazing book. The way it's put together. Substitutionary atonement in the Old Testament is always associated with the number 13. Well, how unlucky is it to be a poor lamb on Passover? You're a beautiful lamb and somebody takes you and slits your throat, sprinkles your blood all over the place. Substitutionary atonement is associated with the number 13. You know, he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. And as I said a moment ago, he was numbered with the transgressors. The word Jehovah has multiples of 13 all the way through it. The word Adonoi has multiples of 13 all the way through it. Elohim has multiples of 13 all the way through it. When you examine its structure in Hebrew and what I'm trying to say in my halting and imperfect way, because I can't speak with the tongues of men and angels and is that love gives of itself so completely that when it's through giving, there's nothing else to give. It's like Jesus, he loved his own to the end. Now, that's love in the Old Testament. And in terms of divine substitutionary atonement, 13, unlucky in the New Testament, 13 becomes lifted up and redeemed in the concept of love. Even that which was in the Old Testament characterized by apostasy and rebellion is in the New Testament, healed by love. That old number 13 is taken and turned around and used as a symbol of love. I just think that's marvelous, the way the Bible does that. Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not loved love, I'm just so much noise. That's what it says. And though I have the gift of prophecy, the gift of prophecy understand all mysteries, I got to tell you right now, nobody understands all the mysteries. But even if you did, if you had all that knowledge and if your faith was absolutely perfect so that you could move a mountain, if you had no love, you're nothing. Have you ever been at a point in your life where you thought about God and you got scared? Let me just propose something. Imagine you're standing in your backyard and you can see the stars. It's a clear night, and you start thinking about the universe. And you look at a particular star and you read that that star is 50,000 light years away, and it's part of a huge cluster or system that is 25,000 light years across. And so even if you traveled at warp factor 10, it would take you several lifetimes to get from that star to that star over there. And you start thinking about this, and you start thinking, man, what am I? I'm nothing. I'm just like a dust mote or less. And then you start thinking, what if there's no God? And what if all this is just an illusion and when I die, I'm just going to flake away and blow off into some far corner of the universe in darkness, coldness? And you begin to think about that, and then you think, well, no, there's a God. I'm sure there's a God. And then you think, well, what if he isn't what everybody says he is? What if he's really a mean God and a fickle God and he's just tricking us into believing that he's a good God, but really he's bad and he's just trying to use us for his own purposes. Because after all, there are a lot of bad things happening on this planet. Maybe God is not the God we think he is. Have you ever had your mind run in that track and you start doubting who God might be and thinking, what if it's all a lie? What if the Bible is not even true and this has all just been invented? What if it's not true at all? What's the cure for that kind of thinking? If you start to doubt, if you get spun away, if Satan manages to just inject an idea in the corner of your mind and you begin to doubt, what is the cure for that? There's one cure. One cure. Love. Because the one thing, the one absolute that wipes it all away is gone, is God is love. If you didn't have anything other than that sentence in the Bible, God is love. John wrote that. And he says, God is love that cures everything. You may not know everything that God is, but you know that he's love. You see, that's amazing. That wipes away all the doubt. I don't care how big the universe is, I don't care how small I am, because he loves me and I know that. And it's been confirmed in me by his spirit. And so if I think of myself as some celestial dust mote, and if I think, boy, maybe there's some kind of an evil God out there, and he's going to snatch me up and carry me off into his fortress of doom and I'll never escape. You know, all the imaginings of man. You've seen science fiction movies, the Two Towers, you know, Lord of the Rings, all of these things. You can imagine all kinds of evil. The cure for that is just this one sentence. God is love, period. That's all you need to think about. We couldn't have made that up. No human being could make up the idea, the notion, the central feature, that God is love. Verse 3. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, though I give my body to be burned and have not love profits me nothing. Wow. Love. You know this. Love is an act of the will. Love involves the heart. Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not love, I am become like noise, your heart has to be in it. Love involves the mind. Verse 2. Though I have the gift of prophecy, to understand all the mysteries and have all faith, so I can remove mountains, if I don't have love, I'm nothing. Love involves the will. Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor and give my body to be burned and have not loved, profits mean nothing. Your heart, your mind and your will have to be suffused with love and operating in the sphere of love in order to be moving in that way that the apostles all talked about, walking in the light. It involves love. It's the one distinguishing factor in Christendom. It is the one thing that separates us from all the other people on earth. Definitively love. I can have a lot of zeros. That's what all these things are, speaking in the tongues of men and angels. Prophecy, mysteries, faith, to remove mountains, giving goods to feed the poor, giving my body to be burned. Those are all like zeros. 00000. How many zeros, end to end, does it take to make something, well, an infinite number? You still have nothing. You know, one for the zeros and one is love and God is love. Now you have a one and you start putting zeros behind it. Suddenly you have a number and that's love. You're nothing unless you put the one in front of it, which is God and love. It's very difficult for me to talk about this because the subject is bigger than my mind can grasp. But you get the idea. Charity, love. Verse four. Love suffers long. Love is impossible, by the way, without kindness. That long suffering idea, bearing up under all kinds of negatives, particularly negatives from other people it's kind. Love is impossible without kindness. It doesn't envy. Now there's a big one. Love envieth not. You know, Some years ago, Sweden began to experiment with socialism. And it became the number one socialist government in the world. And the idea in socialism is the idea that I expressed earlier, which is to equalize the wealth of society so that all the people in society get their equal share. They get the same medical care, hospitalization, they get the same government pensions, they get the same opportunities for jobs, on and on, same housings, you know, two chickens in every pot car in every garage. A Volkswagen in every garage, as Hitler used to say. He had his designer in chief, Ferdinand Porsche, design a car for all people so that everyone would have a car. It was called the Volkswagen. But in Sweden they attempted this social experiment so that everybody could get the same love, sweet love, right? And after a few years, the president of Sweden, Olof Palma, made a speech and he says, I have concluded after watching the development of this social experiment that socialism is nothing more or less than institutionalized envy. I thought, boy, those are powerful words. Socialism is institutionalized envy. It means that if I think I don't get enough, I go to the government and I say, I'm not getting enough, give me mine. Because this guy over here's got more than I've got. And the institution of government says, you're right, we're going to give you the same thing. He has institutionalized envy. You know, envy is. Wow. Francis Bacon said that envy is a vile affection and it is the most depraved of anything on earth. Envy. Love doesn't envy. It does not puff itself up. It does not brag about itself. Verse 5 does not behave itself in an unseemly manner. The unseemly manner here would be what it would be calling attention to itself. It would be defying family and cultural norms, making a nuisance of itself. You know, it's real easy to get attention. All you have to do is just make a nuisance of yourself, become difficult. A lot of people have perfected that. Brought it to a high art, by the way, that has nothing to do with love. Love does not seek its own things. It's not easily provoked. Of course, Jesus said, turn the other cheek. It thinks no evil rejoices, not in iniquity, that is, breaking of the law or operating as a law breaker in any sense of the term. But it rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, it believes all things, it hopes all things. It endures all things. It Never fails. Which takes us Back to John 13:1. Jesus loved his disciples to the end. That means to the end of himself. When you can't give anything else, you can give yourself. And Jesus did really staggering, staggering thought. Love is the secret of service. You can enforce people. You can put them in harness and say, you must do this thing. And if you've got the goods on them in some way or another, you can make them do those things. But really, the way things are done in the body of Christ is through love. Love is always seeking an entree. It's always seeking to fill those things that need to be filled, because that's the way the body operates. Getting back to the illustration of the body, the various parts of the body operate in unison. If a deficiency is sensed, certain parts of the body then get to work and make up for that deficiency. Love does not promote itself, but rather is devoted to the body. You could talk about this forever and you might just be a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. It might just be noise. Unless you were willing to act in love. It's one thing to really learn about the Bible and really be good at it and understanding it and being able to tell everybody about your understanding. It's another thing to act in love. And believe me, I have to say this, it's rare. It grieves me to say it, but it's rare to see people act in love in the biblical sense, giving of themselves to the point that they look toward others before they even consider their own needs. It's a rare thing to see. Love never fails. Verse 8. But whether there be prophecies, they shall fail. Whether there be tongues, they shall cease. We'll talk about that next week when we get into 1 Corinthians 14. The cessation of the sign, gift of tongues, whether there be knowledge, gnosis, it shall vanish away. Yes, knowledge is what. Well, everybody's proud of knowledge. You can go to school and you can get several of those certificates to hang on your wall, you know, I'm telling you, if you've got a few of those certificates to hang on your wall, you are something. And the Bible says knowledge shall cease, because God already knows far more than probably we'll ever know. And our job is not to vaunt ourselves with great acumen, although there's nothing wrong with that if it doesn't become an object in it. Our job, rather, is to become immersed in the Lord so that we become an extension of his love. That's what this is all saying, for we know in part, we prophesy in part. And Paul had been to heaven. You know, he wrote about this, and he'd been to heaven. He was stoned to death. He visited heaven and came back with the instruction, don't talk about some of these things. It's not lawful to talk about them. If anybody could have bragged, it would have been Paul. And he says, we know in part, we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. 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. To be a child in the absolute sense is to be totally occupied with so that you become the axis of the universe. Me, me, me, me, me. As you mature in Christ, you realize that you're not the axis of the universe. He is. And suddenly your job becomes trying to understand what he wants you to be. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, understood as a child, thought as a child. When I became a man, I put away childish things. I began to look toward God. For now we see through a glass darkly. We see as in a mirror looking over our shoulder. And it's not a very good mirror either. But then we'll see face to face. Now I know in part. Then I shall know even as I am known. Perspective. Perspective is that which leads and that which follows. Perspective is everything we have to have Divine perspective. That's what this chapter is all about. And the only way to achieve divine perspective is through the exercise of love. And it's right here in chapter 13, the 13th verse of which is, thou abideth faith, hope and agape. Love, these three. But the greatest of these is love. I don't know if you're like me, but when I read this, I am immediately seized with the imperfection of my own ability to love. It's convicting. It really is convicting. I know how God loves. I have some dim idea because of what Christ did. I know that I'm supposed to emulate, to imitate Christ. And the chief way to do that is through the exercise of love. Well, we'll end there, and we'll take up First Corinthians 14 next week.