Dennis Tuuri

that have been given that have put some time into studying that out. The habitation of his throne. A fire goeth before him and burneth up his enemies round about. His lightnings enlightened the world. The earth saw and trembled. The hills melted like wax at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth. The heavens declare his righteousness, and all the people see his glory. Compounded be all they that serve graven images that boast themselves of idols.

Worship him all ye gods. Let us confess our sins before Almighty God. Almighty God, we Thank thee for thy word that it is a pure light that shines upon us. We confess before you judge of all souls that we have sinned against you by violating your law this past week in thought, word, and deed. Almighty God, see that we now come forth in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

Thank you, Almighty God, for the atoning blood of Jesus, our redeemer, and for the imputed righteousness of Jesus, our peace. Look not upon our sins, but see the sprinkled blood of the lamb. I am provided by your grace. Look not upon our own righteousness, but see the imputed righteousness of our covenant mediator. And so receive our praise and worship in this time of convocation. For we ask it in the mighty and powerful name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen. Now, as many of you as there be who despair themselves in their sins and trust that their debts are completely forgiven to them through the merit of Christ alone, who resolve more and more to desist from sins and to serve the Lord in true holiness and righteousness to those as they believe in the son of the living God. I proclaim at God’s command that they are released in heaven from all their sins as he doth promise in his holy gospel through the perfect satisfaction of the most holy passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen. But as many as you as there be among you who still take pleasure in their sins and shame or persist in sins against their conscience to such I declare by the command of God that his wrath and judgment abideth upon them all their sins being retained in heaven and they can never be delivered from eternal damnation except they repent. Zion heard and was glad and the daughters of Judah rejoiced because of Thy judgments, oh Lord, for thou, Lord, art high above all the earth.

Thou art exalted far above all gods. Ye that love the Lord hate evil. He preserveth the souls of his saints. He deliverth them out of the hand of the wicked. Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart. Rejoice in the Lord, ye righteous, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness. Let us rejoice in song. Go not forth hastily to strive, lest thou know not what to do in the end there.

Of neighbor debate thy cause with thy neighbor himself, lest he that he hearth put thee to shame. A word quickly spoken is like apples of gold and pictures of silver. As the cold of snow in the time of harvest, so is a faithful messenger to them that send him. Who so boasteth himself of a false gift. By long forebearing is a prince persuaded. Hast thou found honey? Eat so much as is sufficient for thee, lest I’ll be filled therewith.

Withdraw thy foot from thy neighbor’s house, lest he be weary of thee. A man that beareth false witness against his neighbor is a mall. Confidence in an unfaithful man in time of trouble is like a broken tooth. As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, and as vinegar upon night, if The enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat. For thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head. The north wind driveth away rain.

It is better to dwell in the corner of the housetop. As cold waters to a thirsty soul, a righteous man falling down before the wicked as a troubled fountain. It is not good to eat much honey. He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down.

1 Corinthians 13. We will read verses 1–7. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. Though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge. And though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

Charity suffereth long, and is kind. Charity envieth not, charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

We came to this place in our series of talks going through the worship of the church, reforming our worship according to the scriptures. We talked last week about the agape or the love feast of the New Testament church of the historic church as well in the first four or five centuries. And we spoke about the Old Testament antecedents for that particular celebration.

Why don’t you turn to Deuteronomy 16 as we review a little bit of that. Deuteronomy 16:11–16 is what we’ll be looking at here for a couple of minutes to review this.

We are pretty familiar this church I suppose with what is called the rejoicing tithe in Deuteronomy 14 and Deuteronomy 16 helps us understand that a little bit. Deuteronomy 14 says there’s a couple of sections that some people have labeled the rejoicing tithe and the poor tithe. I really think those are somewhat of a misnomer. I think instead what’s going on Deuteronomy 14 is that God is giving us instructions as to how to distribute our tithe and specifically in the land in which he was going to bring them into in terms of the promised land itself then in that particular area of that God has people convocate in.

But in any event, he said that they were supposed to use a portion of their tithe as I understand that verse to pay for whatever their heart desires and for a rejoicing time in God’s presence at Jerusalem where he’s going to put his name. And it doesn’t specify which feast that occurs at. Some people have said it’s restricted to the Feast of Booths, but because of reasons of Deuteronomy 16, I don’t think that’s the case.

After that portion of Deuteronomy 14, it goes on to talk a little bit about also what some people call the poor tithe in the third year. It says you don’t go up to you don’t use that necessarily to go up to the temple, but it says the emphasis there is on the inclusion in your own hometown of a rejoicing feast. And it specifically mentions three groups, really the Levite, which is already mentioned in the rejoicing portion of the tithe.

But it also mentions widows, the fatherless, and that’s the term not really orphans in the Old Testament, the fatherless to show that we were fatherless if we were cut off from God through our sin. The fatherless and the stranger. We’re to extend the extension of loving kindness that God has shown to us to these other groups.

Now, when we look at Deuteronomy 16, we see these three requirements to go up three times a year in verse 16 of Deuteronomy 16. And we’re told there that they were supposed to go up to God in the place he chooses, which was Jerusalem at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Weeks, and the Feast of Booths. So, for Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread associated with it, and then the Feast of Weeks at Pentecost, and then the Feast of Booths, three times they’re required to go up and it says your males are required, but from Deuteronomy 14, it’s obvious the family goes along with them.

Now, Deuteronomy 16 talks about these three occurrences. And in verse 11, for instance, it’s talking about the Feast of Weeks. And it says there in verse 11, you shall rejoice before the Lord your God. And so rejoicing was not restricted to the Feast of Booths. It also was to be a characteristic of their time during the Feast of Weeks as well. And it says there also that they are to rejoice and not at the Feast of Weeks.

And it says in verse 11 with the Levite who is in your town and the stranger and the orphan and the widow. And again, I would say fatherless instead of orphan, but those three groups are mentioned there in terms of the rejoicing in God’s presence at the Feast of Weeks. And the rest of the verse goes on then to talk about at the Feast of Booths. Next in verse 13 and again it says in verse 14 to rejoice and it used the same essential description that’s found in verse 11 in terms of the Feast of Weeks.

In verse 14 we find the same description to rejoice with these four groups Levites, widows, fatherless and strangers in God’s presence during the Feast of Weeks as well. And so there’s this extension of mercy at the Feast of Booths as well as the Feast of Weeks.

And then in verse 15 it says seven days you shall celebrate a feast because the Lord God will bless you in all your produce and in all the work of your hands so that you shall be altogether joyful. And this was the conclusion of the harvest year cycle, the Feast of Booths. That’s when everything had been brought in. And so now they have a lot more stuff they’re tithing on. And so it’s probably a larger rejoicing time. But the point is they’re all together joyful. Why? Because God has blessed them. And so this rejoicing aspect is tied to God’s blessings which tied to his law. It’s tied to a communal feast as it were at Jerusalem.

And it’s tied to the extension of mercy as well. And what we said last week was that Deuteronomy 14:16 gives us the case law commands of God relative to a feast together with the extended household at Jerusalem three times a year and then every third year in your local town with more of an emphasis upon charity. That’s the roots of the New Testament Agape. And we looked at the times of Hezekiah. We looked at the times of Nehemiah and saw them celebrating, rejoicing times before God and showing extensions of mercy to those around them as well during those times.

And you remember in Hezekiah’s time it was the Passover that they were celebrating and rejoicing, having a good time for seven days. And they had such a good time, they said, “Let’s stay around for another seven days.” And I said, “Maybe someday we’ll do that here. We’ll stick around for another four hours at the end of our formal worship service at 2:00. Maybe we’ll stay to 6:00 one day.” And you know, if you were here last Christmas, you’ll remember that we did have a particularly blessed day that day.

And I think probably if we had our own facility or if we had this building rented for all day, probably many of us would have stuck around till maybe six o’clock.

So it’s easy to see how that rejoicing can lead to an extension of our rejoicing together into the rest of the day or into a longer period of time that is required for us. In any event, the Passover also was marked by joy and rejoicing together before God. And so all three times this was a time of rejoicing and also had an aspect of mercy to it and an aspect of making sure that Levite is there as well.

Of course, the point of all that is this. When you have your tithe, a portion of that tithe is to be used to finance your rejoicing time before God. And we think I believe that Jesus celebrating the supper of the Passover with his extended household of disciples. And then in context of a meal at the end the Lord’s supper and then the New Testament church talking about the agape in Jude and in 1 Corinthians 11 the agape feast that’s described there in the context of communion all those things extend this tithe this principle of rejoicing and the use of the tithe to fund rejoicing into the agape or love feast which was a normal in fact nobody would have thought about having communion without a meal together during the first couple of centuries of the church we mentioned that church orders of the first couple of centuries made specific provision for the love feast apart from communion that communion was normally celebrated at the end of the love feast and so that’s why we get together and that’s why we have a meal every Sunday it’s not just to prolong what we’re doing here it’s not to make you suffer as you stick around at church a lot longer than most people do.

When you understand what’s going on and you understand that is particularly the focus of our rejoicing before God and the extension of love that he’s given to us to one another, then the meal and the communion at the end takes on a very tremendous significance and is a time of great joy for us. I know it’s odd. Most churches don’t do it. We do it because we think it is biblical. It is New Testament and it is Old Testament and follows through all those things.

It’s very important for the church as well. You know, it gives during a love feast, it gives a horizontal dimension to our worship based upon the vertical relationship we have with God. We’re reconciled to God and we remember that. We proclaim that and the basis of what has done during this portion of our service. And then we go downstairs and we work that out in terms of being reconciled to one another around a meal together.

And so it takes our worship not just vertical, it takes our worship and our act of service to God horizontal to our neighbor as well. And it gives us a model for our whole lives. It tests us, evaluates us to see what our love of God and love of our brother is really like because things can happen in the context of a meal that upset us and can cause us to be concerned with one another and our actions.

But it’s a test from God to evaluate how well we’re going to be longsuffering toward them. I’m getting a little ahead of myself. We’re going to I thought that it would be good last week to mention briefly 1 Corinthians 13. After all, the agape love feast is a love feast. And so it’s important to realize that there are definitions in scripture. There are characteristics of love. And as I thought about this, I thought it might almost be presumptuous to talk about the love feast.

Thought spending at least a little time, certainly at least one Sunday on 1 Corinthians 13 and what the scriptures there tell us about love. That’s what’s supposed to be going on at the love feast. And so 1 Corinthians 13, we’ll spend some time on that to talk about that uh in terms of its application to the rejoicing feast that we have together every week, the agape or love feast. Okay? So that’s why we’re in 1 Corinthians 13 this morning and talking about the love in the love feast.

Now love is obviously a very important part of what our Christian lives are. And so it’s important that we think through a little bit this morning. What is love? I’m sure that you all are pretty well familiar with most of the scriptures relative to this. But it’d be good for us to focus on this again perhaps and to rethink it a little bit. And so we’re going to do that now for a couple of minutes.

I wanted to mention here at the beginning that we’ll be dealing with—we’re going to have to go through there are 15 verbs used in 1 Corinthians 13 to describe love. And we because of the time requirements we have to go through those fairly quickly. But we’ll be going over some of these things in a much slower, more detailed way in another month or two. I think I’ve told you I’m going to be doing a series of sermons on the seven deadly sins. And it’s very interesting to see how the seven deadly sins correlate to these verbs or actions described as love or what love isn’t in 1 Corinthians 13.

And we’ll be pointing that out in a more specific way as we get through into a discussion of the seven deadly sins. But they match up very well.

In 1 Timothy 1:5, we are told that love is the goal of our instruction. Turn to Colossians 3:12–15 if you would please and we see a parallel passage as it were to 1 Corinthians 13. And again, this is just a way of stressing the importance of love. and a correct understanding of it and will help us to understand why I’ve chosen to outline this passage the way I have.

Colossians 3:12–15. If you can turn there for a minute, we read in Colossians 3:12–15. And so, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving each other. Whoever has a complaint against anyone, just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. And beyond all these things, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.

So, if we’re going to talk about the agape, the rejoicing, and the unity that’s demonstrated during our love feast, it’s important we understand that love is the perfect bond of unity. Colossians tells us that. 1 Timothy, as I said, says that love is the goal of our instruction. In 1 Corinthians 14:1, we’re told to pursue love. In Colossians 3:14, we just read, we are told to put on love. In 1 Thessalonians 3:12, we are to increase and abound in love.

And in Philippians 2:2, we’re to be sincere in love. Rather, 2 Corinthians 8:8, we’re to be sincere in love. Philippians 2:2 says, “We’re to be united or unified in love.” And 1 Peter 4:8 says we’re to be fervent in love. And we are told to stimulate one another or to admonish one another and exhort one another. To love in Hebrews 10:24, a verse we should be familiar with. We recite that verse frequently during our communion service.

Point of all this is that love is a characteristic of the Christian life should be obvious, I suppose, but these verses make it quite clear that it’s important. It’s an essential part of what we do. And Colossians tells us it’s the perfect bond of unity and what draws us together. Now, Colossians, I think, has also the same two divisions that we’ve made in 1 Corinthians 13 on your outlines. And that is there are the side of love that is compassion and kindness and humility.

And then there’s also the Colossians uh 3 goes on to tell us or Colossians 3 goes on to say that love is gentleness, patience, bearing with one another, forgiving each other. And so you have those two different aspects described. One is an active sort of a thing that we do to people. And the other is a passive sort of thing saying we don’t do other things toward people. We don’t take account of wrongs.

We don’t get upset. We don’t lash out. We are patient. We are forbearing. We are longsuffering. And for that reason, I have chosen to on your outlines, as you can see, talk first about the love being characterized by two things. By patience, and by kindness. Now, in the text itself, in 1 Corinthians 13, we see these two verbs at the beginning of the list of what love is 1 Corinthians 13:4 after saying one other thing about this I mentioned this last week but it’s quite important to see here that Paul I think uses things that really have to do essentially with worship in those first three verses of 13 that says without love all this is useless may not seem like that at first but remember that tongues was a was a gift of God in terms of worship prophecy understanding the mysteries and knowledge again refers to the instruction received in worship and the and the exhortation that occurs in corporate worship bestow my goods to feed the poor.

We don’t normally think of that in terms of worship, but remember that he has told these Corinthians a couple of chapters before that they have abused the agape and as a result the Lord’s table. They have taken their supper one before the other. They haven’t shared their food with the poor. So the rich have lot and the poor have nothing to eat. They’ve abused an essential act of worship, the agape which has a charity aspect to it.

Now we talked about how in the third and fourth century the church, charity became preeminent and the agape and the unity and the rejoicing and the love that is really the essential component of the love feast got sublimated under all under the idea of charity. So we don’t want to do that. But on the other hand, charity is an aspect of that worship service, an extension of grace, particularly in the context of the body and those who have less and those who have more.

There’s a leveling out as it were. I know we hate to think of that in terms of the state, but in terms of the church, there’s a leveling out when it comes to our food together every Sunday. And that’s a demonstration of charity or beneficence of the rich toward the poor. And so I think that what Paul is saying there is that among other things is certainly what we do in our worship, which is the model of what we do in the rest of our life.

If we do all these things correctly with the right form and have the worship, etc., but don’t have love, then we’ve missed the whole point. And so it’s very important to realize that then that we understand what love is and we conform our lives in accordance to it. And I think that the reason why Paul starts with two specific positive things and then hints into a set of negative things in terms of love is to help us see that these two things really categorize the characteristics of love.

Verse four, charity suffers long and is kind. Two positive verbs, what charity is, what love is, and then a series of eight negative verbs. Love isn’t these things. Now, I’m not saying this is the only way to outline the passage, but it’s a way that helped me to understand it a little bit better and so I’ve chosen to use it this morning. We’re saying that love is characterized by patience and by kindness.

That these two things are the essential characteristics of love. And then we’ll talk about how Paul contrasts love with other things later on as we go through this set of verbs. Okay, first patience and kindness. Patience and kindness. Love is important thing to recognize here pointed out by Lenski in his commentary is that if you think about those two characteristics of love, Paul doesn’t use some great demonstration of love.

Martyrdom for instance or great acts of charity. He uses two characteristics that are supposed to characterize our reactions to little things. Patience is being patient in the light of small sufferings that we go through on a regular basis when we’re around people. That’s the way it is. Or when we’re in the world itself. There are limitations that God placed upon us and there is sin in terms of the context of the people that we’re in the context of and which is understood ourselves.

Love is patient in the little things of life and love is kind. Small acts of kindness are really the essential aspect of love. And so God, Paul, God through Paul here immediately takes us to the nitty-gritty of life, if you will, the little things that make up our lives instead of some great big demonstrations of love that we may want to focus on ourselves. We’ll talk about that again at the end of our presentation this morning.

Okay. Love suffers long when wronged. I’ve said under patience that there are three essential characteristics and the first one of these characteristics really is the specific meaning of charity suffers long. The word that’s used there has reference almost exclusively in the New Testament to suffering wrongs at the hand of somebody as opposed to something. So the patience described here is patience when somebody does something that hurts us, not when our car breaks down.

That’s not this kind of patience. That word’s going to be used in a couple of minutes, but it’s not used here. The word here at the given at the top of this list has to do with patience in terms of people when they do things that hurt us. And of course that makes sense because Paul is here correcting their agape abuses. He’s telling he’s correcting their abuses of the gifts in chapter 12. He’s correcting the divisions that existed among them is the reason one of the main reasons for the epistle.

And so it’s appropriate that he uses the term here in terms of longsuffering toward each other. And I’m sure that in the context of a group of people like this, if you’ve been here 3, four, five years, probably just about everybody has done something that’s hurt you at one time or another. And the scriptures should tell us that love puts up with a lot of that. That doesn’t mean you just sit back and somebody pops you right in the nose and you don’t do anything about it.

There are limits to this that are quite obvious. But the point is that many of the small hurts that we receive, we are just to overlook and to bear with and to be patient with people. In the context of this, Chris Austin in his writing on this said that it’s a word that’s used in the man who is wronged and who has it easily in his power to avenge the wrong, but we’ll never do it. We’ll never do it.

We are called to be long-suffering and patient when people do things that hurt us. One commentator has said, “This is equivalent to victory over a just resentment.” The point of this is the person has really done something to hurt you. That’s what the word indicates here. But you are still patient with it. Longsuffering. You don’t immediately lash out. You don’t immediately say, “Let’s go to church court.” You try to work the thing out or you try to ignore it if it’s a small matter and a trifle.

Even though they may be in the wrong, you suffer under that. And you just put up with it. You are patient when people do these things to you. Secondly, the scriptures tell us that and this portion of scripture that love is characterized by patience in bearing all things. Now, I’m jumping out of the context the flow of the verbs here, but there’s a reason for this. If you look down at verse 7, we return now to four positive things that love does.

We start with two positive statements. Love is patient, love is kind, then a series of negatives, and then we get to the bottom of this section description of love in verse 7 where we have four positive statements. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. And bearing all things is under patience. Bearing has to do with covering things over again. not bringing up wrongs that people do, but instead if it’s not necessary, to keep them private and to keep them under cover as it were.

to bear and to endure, I have put under the classification of patience. Whereas the middle two of those four things in verse 7, to believe all things and hope all things, I put under kindness. Okay? So to bear endure is part of forbearance. To hope and believe is a part of kindness. And so love bears all things patiently. It again has reference to things that ought to be endured. Obviously, love doesn’t endure and bear with somebody who is trying to kill you.

But again, in these small matters of life where we are hurt on a regular basis in the context of a covenant community. We’re to bear up under those things and we’re not to inflate these sins to great importance in the context of the covenant community or they are really of minor importance. Love is patient. Love bears up under things and is long-suffering. The motivation of these two characteristics in terms of patience and longsuffering with people and bearing up under them.

The motivation of all this isn’t just to be a good martyr. We’ve all seen people who do that. The motivation for this isn’t the selfish motivation. It’s for the peace of the body and for the best of the other person. And that’s a good thing to help correct us when we are too longsuffering. It’s not to the best of another person to let him go on flagrantly sinning in the context of the body. Okay, the scriptures don’t tell us that.

Scriptures say with those sort of people, we got to correct it because our motivation is for their well-being. Love covers a multitude of sins. That’s used a couple of ways in scripture. One way is it overlooks the trifles that we that we regularly suffer. But another way it says that we’re supposed to correct a brother and love that acts in that way covers and helps make atonement for those sins. Not that we can make atonement, but to get them to come to repentance and bring those sins under the blood of Jesus Christ.

Love covers things. Love endures all things. The term used here at the end of verse 7 that love endureth all things is a military term. It means to sustain the assault of an enemy upon oneself. Now, this is usually talked about in scriptures, a specific term, in terms of external circumstances and not people. And so, love keeps on loving in spite of the circumstances. Now, there’s a progression to these four that we’ll get to in a couple of minutes, but for right now, suffice it to say that love endures all things in terms of external circumstances because of the love we have for another person that we seek their well-being.

This is in order that they might be helped by our actions. Okay. There’s an excellent story that John MacArthur in his commentary on this passage of scripture relates during the time of Oliver Cromwell. During the time of Oliver Cromwell, there was a young man in the military service who had done something wrong. This account doesn’t say what it was and was sentenced to death and he was sentenced to die when they rang curfew.

They had a big bell and when the curfew bell rang, that was when the young man was to be executed. And they waited and they waited and the curfew bell didn’t ring. And they went over and they said, “What’s going on?” And the guy said, “Well, I don’t know what’s going on. I’m pulling the cord. It’s not ringing.” They looked up and there, this was the girlfriend of this young soldier and she had loved him so much that she wanted him to be pardoned.

Couldn’t get the pardon. She knew the details of the sentence and she had climbed up the rope and wrapped herself around the clapper of this big bell and taken the bruises and afflictions of the clapper banging against the sides of the bell to try to save the man that she loved. There was a poem written about this that reads, “Thus she then goes to Cromwell, tells her story, and Cromwell reprieves the young man.

At his feet, she told her story, showed her hands all bruised and torn, and her sweet young face still haggard with the anguish it had worn, touched his heart with sudden pity, lit his eyes with misty light. ‘Go, your love lives,’ said Cromwell. ‘Curfew will not ring tonight.’ And that’s an example of longsuffering for another person who apparently had done some wrong and holding up hope for that person.

enduring all things. In this case, the banging of the clapper against the side of the bell, driven and motivated for love for another person. And so, we’re supposed to have that kind of longsuffering one for another. We’re to be patient. We’re not supposed to lash out. Secondly, though, love is also to be kind. Love is kindness. and in this context, again, the first point under point being your outline, love is characterized by a kindness that serves others.

And that’s the specific sense of the verse in verse four here where it says charity suffers along. We’ve dealt with that. And is kind. And the word kind there means to serve other people. Now, love certainly is kind in the sense of extending little acts of nicety to others, putting up with their foibles etc. But the specific word that’s used here and is not used very often in scripture means from its root word to be useful towards somebody else to be useful.

And so biblical love that the agape or love to be characterized by is a drive and a desire a strong desire to help other people to be actively involved in the service of others to promote their well-being to put aside our own self-interest and be motivated by things of them. The root word is useful as has said here kindness means inclined to form good offices. That’s what the root word of the means.

That’s the root word of this word means. And so the primary sense of the word kind here is to be disposed to be useful. Hodge said to be disposed to be useful. Love is disposed to be useful in this context of the love feast for the sake of the body. You’re supposed to be useful to other people here at church. You’re to be animated to the constant need to make yourself useful to other members of the body of Christ.

That’s what biblical agape love is for your brother and sister in Jesus Christ. You are to be motivated to do service for them. You don’t just desire somebody else’s welfare. These are a set of verbs. You act on the basis of their welfare and you move to serve other people. And this is a very important point. I said last week that one of the opponents of agape or the love feast is sin and the specific sin of individualism, self-interest.

And we’ll see that in a couple of minutes. What love is contrasted with. Love is contrasted with self-interest. We’re to be interested in the things of others and we’re to be motivated to help and to serve them in the context of the body. Very important here because we’ve all grown up as good, strong, rugged individuals in America. In America, we take care of ourselves and you ought to take care of yourself.

And sometimes I might help you out if I can, but more often than not, you can take care of it yourself. And that is not biblical love. Christianity says you’re to be motivated to seek whatever you can do to serve other people, specifically in the context of the body. Now, that has application of course to all kinds of things in life, but certainly be remiss of me in context of the church, which he’s addressing here and the divisions that exist in the church.

Not to mention its relevance to the affairs of Reformation Covenant Church or other local bodies. What this means is that if you love Jesus Christ and you love his people and you love his church here, Reformation Covenant Church, that love will be demonstrated. One of the primary characteristics of it besides patience is kindness. A desire to be useful to that body. That means you don’t sit back and wait to say, “Well, maybe somebody will come to me sometime and maybe I can help somebody out here at the church or be part of this thing somehow.” No, it means you actively seek out how can I serve this body?

What can I do to help out here at church? Is there anything I can do, fellas? You go to the deacons, you go to the elders, and you actively seek out that way to help other people. Now, it’s a little different than our normal way of doing things. Sometimes we’re too embarrassed to do that. Embarrassment is essentially self-interest, though. It doesn’t want us to make us feel foolish. We want to help out when there’s a need that’s ministrated and I think we all can move in far better obedience to God’s word in this area motivated to service.

Now to assist you in that we are discussing and they haven’t finalized the decision yet we will—we are I think we’re moving toward having essentially one of the deacons be a staffing sort of person who other people other officers will go to get people to do particular functions if we need a Sunday school teacher or somebody to do the tapes or whatever it is we’ll go to one deacon that’s the idea we’re thinking of the advantage of that will be that you’ll then have one person to go to say I really would like to do more than I’m doing in terms of the body here Reformation Covenant Church please put me to use a be go to one person one deacon he’ll know the needs in church that you could fill and that’ll work out a lot better.

Okay. Point of all that is that biblical love wants to help out. Now, this is real pertinent to the meal downstairs. One of the great things about having an agape is that it forces us to work together. It’s not easy to put on a meal for 150 or 200 people every week. It is impossible if we don’t all work together. And so the agape or the love feast forces us to acts of kindness to one another. Seeing something amiss downstairs or whatever, we move to take care of it.

We don’t try to find somebody else to take care of it. We pitch in and help and do what’s required to get the thing rolling. So love is kindness. Kindness that serves others. Now, love is also kindness in terms of a couple of other active verbs here used. Again, we’re going to go back down to verse 7 of the passage. Love bears all things. Love believes all things, and love hopes all things. Remember, I said that we’re kind of taking the brackets of the passage here, dealing with those first as the characteristics of love.

Love believes all things, and love hopes all things. So, kindness not only is motivated by an activity or a desire to serve others, it is also kindness that believes all things. Augustine commenting on this said that this that believes all things is a disposition to believe the best of all men. He wrote that in his confessions. chapter 10 or book 10:3 Augustine said that it’s a disposition to believe the best of all men.

Hodge’s writing on believing all things says this means essentially that it is not suspicious. Love is not suspicious but love readily credits what men say in their own defense. Luther writing on the eighth commandment says that the eighth commandment instructs us to quoting Luther now excuse him excuse him speak well of him and put the best construction on everything he does. Put the best instruction on what our neighbor and what our brother in Jesus Christ does.

And so this thing. This statement of love’s kindness, love believes all things, means an elimination of suspicion in our minds, one toward another. Now, our fallen natures are very suspicious. So, we’re malicious. So, we like to hurt people, like to think the worst of people. What God is telling us is that in Jesus Christ, we’re new creatures. And part of the conforming to his image is disciplining ourselves to believe the best about our brother and sister in the Lord, not to believe the worst.

It means we’re not supposed to jump to bad conclusions about people on the basis of no evidence. More than that, more than that, it means that when there is evidence to the contrary, when we see them do things that to us seem to indicate there might be some sin going on, there might be some bad attitudes going on, do we believe that? We do not. We are told by this verse to believe all things relative to our brother, to avoid suspicion, and to put the best possible construction on his actions, not just to ourselves.

But in terms of speaking about that person, to another person in the body. You see, if you’ve got a suspicion about somebody doing something wrong, don’t go to somebody else with a suspicion. Get rid of the suspicion in your own mind and put the best construction on it. And then when somebody else brings to you a suspicion, you say, “Well, yeah, but that could have been accounted for in this way. So, let’s let it ride.

Let’s not worry about it.” And if it’s a big deal and you think it needs to be taken care of, what does the scriptures clearly teach us we’re supposed to do in situations like that? We’re supposed to go to our brother. We’re not to go to somebody else. We’re to go to our brother to work that thing out and find out what he tells us. And then, as these commentators tell us, when he tells us, well, my reason for doing that activity was thus and so and thus and so.

We’re not supposed to say, well, what if he’s really telling me the truth? No. Love believes all things in context of another believer, another member of the household of the king. These are king’s children we’re talking about. We’re to treat them with royalty and dignity that they deserve being in Jesus Christ. And we’re supposed to say, “Okay, well, that’s what you say. That’s okay with me.” Now, love isn’t foolish.

You know, you don’t watch somebody stab another person and he says, “Oh gosh, I didn’t know I had a knife in my hand.” You don’t—you’re not foolish about the thing. But the point is that’s not usually our problem is it. Usually our problem is suspicion and not believing the best about people putting the worst construction on what they do as opposed to the best construction.

I mentioned last week the agape and what it teaches to us is needful not just for the church gathered but also for the church scattered. I mentioned political action and I won’t get into the details of the specific personalities but this a specific violation of this is what’s led to some of the controversy. One person another person is involved. This person sees this person doing some things that seem to indicate he may be acting in sinful ways and harming this person.

This person instead of first of all conforming his belief system according to God’s word and putting the best instruction of that activity jumps to the wrong conclusion and even then he doesn’t go to the other person and say am I right in this or am I wrong no he sits he stews and then he tells that story to other people and as a result you have a complete breakdown of agape a complete violation of what the scriptures tell us here and so you have not biblical love but hatred for our brothers and by the way in this particular instance which is a real story I’m talking about I won’t tell you the names but there’s one other party involved this other party has been telling this party who is the one who’s failing to believe all things about this person who has done some things that seem inappropriate this person who jumps to the wrong conclusions has had his ear whispered into by another party for several years about this fellow this fellow is bad.

Don’t trust him. He’s going to hurt you. And so it set up a negative presupposition in this person. And that isn’t a very good situation, but that’s a normal situation is why I bring it up. It is common for us to have people that whisper in our ears things about other people. And what I’m warning you about is if you can’t stop that flow of information into your ear, at least steel yourselves against these negative presuppositions that their thoughts would have planted in your mind about your brother in Christ.

Steel yourself against it. What you should do is rebuke the fellow that’s telling you that is what you should do. And if he refuses to accept your rebuke, have nothing to do with him because he’s causing dissension within the body of Christ. But if you have that flow of information, don’t give credence to it. It’s going to happen to you. I guarantee you it’ll happen to you at the front of the next six months.

Somebody will tell you something about somebody else. That’ll set up a negative presupposition. You’ll see that person at church or some activity from the church or out there someplace doing something and you’ll put the worst construction on it. You put the worst construction. We have a case in our church where this happened. I use this as an example sometimes. I don’t think anybody minds because it happened so many years ago.

There was one fellow who left our church, moved away, and one another person in the church started a joke. You know, we joke a lot at this church. We believe in laughter and joy. It’s a good thing. And the joke was told that this person had taken a particular item of church furniture with them. I don’t remember how it came about exactly and not that big a deal. The point is somebody gave some credence to that started talking to other people about that and before you know it then these other people had a test given to them by God.

Were they going to believe the worst about this person and think he really did take this item of furniture? Were they going to believe that? Are they going to say, “Well, if we don’t know that, then we shouldn’t say it.” See, a test happened there. God, I’m convinced, sets up these tests for us. I hope you don’t mind me saying that. God does test us and he evaluates us.

Sunday is the day of judgment. Among other things, we have the Lord’s supper downstairs. It judges us. We have the sword of the spirit that comes out every Sunday from the pulpit and it cuts us apart. Says, “How you doing? Which of these things did you disobey?” And then we’re healed in Jesus Christ like we are downstairs at the supper. It’s a day of judgment. God tests us throughout the week. He sets up circumstances for us and we can either fall into sin or we can avoid sin.

And I’m telling you this particular area why I’m dwelling so long in these first couple of characteristics of love is that these are the ones that’ll kill you most every time to jump to the wrong conclusion about another brother or to fail to go out of your way to try to serve other people in the context of the church. Very difficult things for us to do in the context of America in 1989. Okay. If we believe the best, God will test.

A little slogan I made up there. The point is we need to eliminate suspicion in our minds one toward another. Now, our fallen natures are very suspicious. So, we’re malicious. So, we like to hurt people, like to think the worst of people. What God is telling us is that in Jesus Christ, we’re new creatures. And part of the conforming to his image is disciplining ourselves to believe the best about our brother and sister in the Lord, not to believe the worst.

See, if you’ve got a suspicion about somebody doing something wrong, don’t go to somebody else with the suspicion. Get rid of the suspicion in your own mind and put the best construction on it. And then when somebody else brings to you a suspicion, you say, “Well, yeah, but that could have been accounted for in this way, so let’s let it ride. Let’s not worry about it.” And then when somebody else brings to you a suspicion you say “Well, yeah, but that could have been accounted for in this way, so let’s let it ride. Let’s not worry about it.”

Doesn’t help us and makes us feel bad. First of all, we try to just cover it over if we can and we don’t know there’s active malicious sin involved. We don’t take all these offenses up without each other. We let some things slide, the trifles. And so love in that sense in verse 7 bears up under these sorts of sin. And love does that because it believes the best about the other party. We believe they’ve done something not intentionally to hurt us, but somehow it has hurt us, but we believe the best about them.

And so even when we are forced to look at the situations of more scrutiny, we force our minds to presupposition. This person has the best in heart. We put the best construction on the sin available. But then if that’s proven to be wrong, then we hope that person will respond to exhortation, remonition given by the church officially by the believers. We hope for that other person, other member of the body of Christ that they’ll respond to the disciplinary action.

And we keep hoping and enduring that hope in spite of all the persecutions that may come upon us and all the external circumstances that may try to hurt our hope that person will come to repentance. And so there’s this progression in verse 7 that demonstrates again and again, love keeps working. It keeps working.