God's Definition of Love, Part 3
Tom Shrader concludes a three-part series on 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, working through the final traits of love including not rejoicing in unrighteousness, rejecting gossip, and rejoicing in truth. He addresses the dangers of bitterness and score-keeping in relationships, illustrating with a weed-root analogy how unresolved offenses grow destructively over time. Drawing on Peter's denial and restoration in Luke 22 and Acts 2-4, Shrader emphasizes that God's grace is powerful enough to change anyone, and calls believers to a life of love that makes the invisible God visible to the world around them.
“God's grace is powerful enough to change anybody, anytime, anywhere.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: God's Definition of Love
Recorded: 2007 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 49 min
Themes: love, bitterness, forgiveness, gossip, grace, relationships, truth, restoration, struggling with bitterness, navigating conflict, husband, wife, holding grudges, new believer, young adult, parent
Scripture: Matthew 5:13-16, Galatians 5:16, Philippians 2:3-8, Matthew 20:28, 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, Ephesians 4:1, Ephesians 4:25-31, Isaiah 5:20, Romans 1:32, 2 Timothy 4:1-4, Judges 17:6, 1 Peter 4:8, Matthew 26:31-35, Luke 22:54-62, Acts 2:14-41, Acts 3, Acts 4:12-20
Theological Themes: sanctification, fruit of the spirit, agape love, soteriology, biblical love, repentance, spiritual transformation, imago dei
Full Transcript
Introduction and Series Context
We are glad you have decided to join us this morning. We invite you to open your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 13. We are in a series titled "God's Plan for Growing in Grace," and the inspiration for this series came from Matthew chapter 5, verses 13 through 16. The real impetus for it was verse 16, where Jesus tells us that we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world, and that we should let our saltiness and our light be experienced.
In Matthew chapter 5, verse 16, He says this: "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they see your good works and then glorify your Father who is in heaven." There are two parts to this. First, that people would see our good works — apparently there is something visibly distinct and different about a Christian in the way we live, encounter life, experience life, and approach life. Then we are to tell those around us, as they see this and ask, that it is not the result of a temperament we have. It is not because we are instinctively nice, kind, or gentle people. It is because our hearts have been transformed, so that they might see our good works and in turn glorify our Father who is in heaven as we tell them that He is the source of those works.
We said we are not going to resist talking about the obvious things — disciplines and works, Bible study, prayer, serving, giving, and all the things that go with that. Our emphasis has been on the condition, our heart condition, our mindset as we serve. We are to be led not by the world or the flesh but by the Spirit.
The Fruit of the Spirit as Evidence of Salvation
Paul tells us in Galatians chapter 5, verse 16 that if we are led by the flesh it is obvious, but he also says it is obvious if we are filled with the Spirit. We will have the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. If we are followers of Christ, those qualities will be present in our lives.
That means tomorrow, when you walk into the job, walk onto the campus, are at home dealing with your children, children are responding to your parents, you are in a dating situation, or you are in a marriage — whatever that condition is — there is something distinct and different about you because your life has been invaded by a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. If that is not present, if you are responding just like everyone else, then what Scripture would say is that you have no biblical assurance that you are saved at all. There has to be a situation where you begin to look like your Father.
We used to talk about this when the girls were small. If I brought our girls in here when they were young and said, "Which ones are my kids?" you would point them out. If I asked how you knew, you would say, "Because they look like you." Well, if Jesus is your heavenly Father, then you ought to look like Him. In fact, we tend to marry people and after a while we even start to look like them, and then, strangely enough, we buy dogs that look like us. So if you wonder how we see you, go home and look at your mutt — that will help you understand our view of you.
Love Is Preeminent Above Everything Else
If all of that is true — and it is — then the fruit of the Spirit is love, along with all these other things. But what is love? Love is preeminent above everything else. If you do not have love, then you are not His. No matter how gifted you are, no matter how hard you work, serve, and give, no matter how faithful you are, no matter what your role — if you do not have love, then all of it is a waste of time. It is a noisy gong and clanging cymbal in the midst of all of that.
So we are going to talk about love. We are going to look at 1 Corinthians chapter 13, verses 4 through 7. In his commentary, Matthew Henry says by way of introduction: "The apostle gives us in these verses some properties and effects of love, both to describe and commend it, that we may know whether we have this grace, and if we have not this grace, we will not rest until we obtain it."
Defining Love as God Defines It
Here is what we are trying to do, and this is our third and final week on these four verses. We are trying to define love as God defines it, and then we want you to see how important it is. With that knowledge, you can evaluate your life to see if you are a lover as God defines it, and if you see yourself coming up short, you need to do something about it. You need to ask God for His grace, His mercy, and His strength to be the person that God describes here in 1 Corinthians chapter 13. The overarching question is: are you a lover as God defines it?
A Quick Summary of What We Have Covered
Let us work our way through a quick summary before we camp on those last two verses. Love is, as Paul defines it, patient — long-suffering, long-tempered. The word Paul chose speaks of relationship with people, not circumstances. He had other words available to him and did not choose those. The one he chose says that we are patient with people.
Love is not jealous. Jealousy is a dark, dark sin with two components. One is wanting what someone else has, and the darker side is simply not wanting them to have what they have — even when you do not want it yourself. Love does not brag. It is the only time that word is used in the New Testament, and it is the other side of jealousy — it is making others want what you have, building yourself up, puffing yourself up even if it requires tearing someone else down. Love is not arrogant, overbearing, haughty, or proud.
Love does not act unbecomingly, as Paul says in verse 5. It means poor manners. William Barclay writes: "Love does not behave gracelessly." Love is much more than being gracious and considerate, but it is never less than being that.
Love Does Not Seek Its Own
Love acting unbecomingly is really expressed in our consideration and conduct as we deal with people outside the community of belief — outside the church, as we deal with unbelievers. The key is tucked away there in verse 5: love does not seek its own. Jesus is our role model in this, as He is in all of these.
Philippians chapter 2, verse 3: Paul writes, "Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourself. Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in you" — that humble attitude that was also in Christ Jesus. Here is how it is evidenced: "who although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but He emptied Himself, taking the form of a bondservant and being made in the likeness of man, being found in the appearance of man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even the humiliating, excruciatingly painful death on the cross."
Jesus becomes that model of humility, of not seeking your own, of not saying, "What about me?" In a marriage, a wife is consumed with meeting her husband's needs and a husband is consumed with meeting his wife's needs, regardless of how the other one is responding. God calls me to love Susan whether Susan responds or not. The lover of Christ loves the church — and the key is always Jesus. Matthew chapter 20, verse 28: Jesus said, "the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve."
Love Is Not Provoked
Love is not provoked — it is not aroused to anger. Henry Drummond writes this: "For embittering life, for breaking up communities, for destroying the most sacred relationship, for devastating families and homes, for withering up men and women, for taking the bloom off childhood, in short, for sheer gratuitous misery-producing power, this influence" — he is talking about anger, irritation, temper — "stands alone."
Love Does Not Keep Score
Here is where we left off last week: love does not take into account a wrong suffered. The phrase "take into account" is a bookkeeping term. It means to enter something into a ledger, to enter it into a permanent record — the desire and intent being that it will never be taken out, never be changed, that this is a permanent record. Love does not do that.
We used the phrase last week that one man said: when he fights with his wife, she does not get hysterical, but she does get historical. She says, "Do you remember back in October of 1971? It was you who did that." This is an important truth — to take into account a wrong suffered, to keep score, is the source of resentment and bitterness.
Walking Worthy of Your Calling
Mark your place there in 1 Corinthians and turn to the right a couple of books to the book of Ephesians — 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians — and we are going to Ephesians chapter 4. Paul uses a pattern in the book of Ephesians that he uses in several of his other epistles, where he introduces incredible doctrinal truths and then follows them with personal application. Here he talks about being chosen and sealed, about being saved by grace through faith, about being together in one body.
Then in chapter 4, verse 1, he says, "I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, entreat you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you've been called." What does that look like? "With all humility and gentleness and patience, showing forbearance to one another in love." You have been called. You have been saved for a reason, for a purpose.
God saved you for a reason. If all He wanted to do was get you to heaven, He would have taken you there at the moment of salvation — but He left you here for a reason. God has something He is doing in your life. He is not done with you yet. We would know if He were done with you, because you would assume room temperature — when He is done with you, you will die. But until that time, God is using you. His intention is that you would become healthily obsessed with trying to understand what God is doing in your life and how He intends to use you. Walk in a manner worthy of your calling.
Putting Off the Old, Putting On the New
Paul then begins to spell out what that looks like. He talks about one body, about us as a body, and then he starts to talk about our relationship with the life we used to have — we used to be this, and now we are this. Look at verse 25. He is talking about the new self, the new you. "Therefore, lay aside falsehood" — but that is not enough — "speak the truth." "Be angry and yet do not sin. Do not give the devil an opportunity." Verse 28: "Let him who steals, steal no longer" — and it is not enough simply to stop stealing, but now go and labor with your hands.
Verse 29 speaks to the mouth: "Let no unwholesome speech come out of your mouth." The purpose for your speech, as verse 29 makes clear, is "to edify according to the need of the moment, that it may give grace to those who hear." The whole idea of the tongue — and we are going to talk about gossip today and the way the tongue can be used to violate what God would have us do — is that I use it in a way that glorifies God by edifying others according to the need of the moment. But how would I know your need if I do not listen as you tell me what that need is?
Verse 30 says, "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit." Then verse 31 gets to this idea —
Keeping Score and the Root of Bitterness
We are talking about keeping score. This gets to the idea of a root of bitterness. Listen to Paul's commands here: "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice." There is almost a progression there from the invisible to the external. It starts with bitterness, simmers into wrath, becomes visible anger, then clamor, then slander — that is the root of bitterness at work.
What Paul is saying here is so powerful and so helpful in dealing with relationships. It means I am not harboring some event from long ago in my heart. I have forgiven, maybe not forgotten. Someone once said, "Love does not forgive and forget, but rather remembers and still forgives." That resentment, that bitterness, is gone.
What happens — and I have watched it over and over again in relationships — is that sometimes it is a huge thing that you never get over, but frequently it is not that big a thing that flips into someone's heart and takes root there. Over a period of time, days, weeks, months, years, it begins to grow and grow and grow. Then all of a sudden it just manifests itself in an ugly way: bitterness, to wrath, to anger, to clamor, to slander.
An Illustration from the Backyard
I had a wonderful illustration of this years ago. We were living in a house we moved from three or four years ago, and prior to that we had lived in the same house for about twenty-two years. I loved the house. Susan never really liked it very much, so it was a long twenty-two years for her.
It was a ranch-style house, long and not huge — around 2,600 or 2,700 square feet — but I just liked the way it felt. We had a really large pool, the kind they used to build in the old days, a diving pool, eight or ten feet deep. It was a great pool. I was in it maybe three times in my life, but they told me it was great.
Behind the pool, someone had put in a little cabana area — a sink, a shower, a small changing room, and some storage. It was a cool asset, and it really hadn't cost that much. There was a grass area beside it, and between the cabana and the wall there was a rock area about two and a half feet wide. So if you walked out around the pool and around the cabana, you had the grass area, then a little brick lining, then about two and a half feet of rock, and then a wall.
I am not much for that kind of yard work, so I had not paid much attention to it. The girls came in one day and said, "Dad, have you been out on the other side of the cabana in a while?" I said no. They said, "Well, you ought to go look at it. The weeds are up to our waist." I went out, and for some reason I decided I was going to pull those weeds myself. I started pulling, and I could not budge them. They were just ripping off in my hands. I gave it maybe forty-five to sixty seconds — it was hot — and then went back inside.
I told Susan we had a problem. She said she knew and had been waiting for me to do something about it. I told her to call the weed guy and I would meet him out there. So I met the guy, showed him the situation, and he said, "You have a problem." I told him I knew that and asked how it had gotten this way. He explained that we were going to need some radical surgery, because the weeds could not simply be pulled out.
He said we would have to remove all the rock and all the plastic, scrape everything down, and kill whatever was underneath, because the weeds had actually grown down under the plastic. Here is what had happened over the years: as the lawn was cut, grass clippings had flipped up onto the plastic and the rocks. As we or the kids walked on the rocks, the rocks had perforated the plastic. Over a long enough period of time, the grass had worked its way down under the plastic, and with a little moisture it was almost like a greenhouse under there. The roots took hold and kept growing, completely out of sight. Then all of a sudden it just came blowing up through the plastic. The only way to fix it was to rip everything out, cut it back, treat the soil, and kill what was down there.
I thanked him and told him he had just given me a perfect illustration of the root of bitterness. It is like a little piece of grass that flips into your heart. It is not big enough an issue to talk about, but it is too big to forget. Then over time, in the right conditions — perhaps a lack of nourishment or love in a relationship — that thing just explodes. There is the progression: wrath, anger, clamor, and slander.
Love does not take into account a wrong suffered. Love does not keep score. Love remembers and still forgives.
Love Does Not Rejoice in Unrighteousness
Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other — how? Just as God in Christ has forgiven you. He is not saying that the other person deserves that forgiveness. You give it. Why? Because you have been forgiven. Love does not take into account a wrong suffered.
Love does not rejoice in unrighteousness. There are two ideas communicated here. First, love does not rejoice in doing wrong or sinning. Second, love does not rejoice in other people's sins or trials and travails. Isaiah writes in chapter 5, verse 20: "Woe to those who call evil good, who substitute darkness for light, and who substitute bitter for sweet."
In Romans chapter 1, Paul issues a blanket indictment of mankind. He says that everybody can look around — at the stars, the moon, the universe — and know there is a God. But there are people who suppress that truth, thinking they become wise, when in fact they have become fools. This launches a whole downward cycle of sin, culminating in a long list of grievous sins. Paul then summarizes it in Romans chapter 1, verse 32: "They are fully aware of God's penalty for those who do these things, yet they go right ahead and do them. And worse yet, they encourage others to do them as well."
Love does not rejoice in unrighteousness. Love does not enjoy its own sin or say, "Come on, let's do this." And the other side of this is that love does not rejoice in the sin of others — which launches us into a discussion of gossip.
The Sin of Gossip
John MacArthur writes a paragraph on this subject that contains several wonderful thoughts worth examining closely. He writes: "One of the most common forms of rejoicing in sin is gossip. Gossip would do little harm if they did not have so many eager listeners. This sin, which many Christians treat lightly, is wicked — not only because it uncaringly reveals weaknesses and sins of others, and therefore hurts rather than helps them, but because the heart of gossip is rejoicing in evil. Gossip that is true is still gossip. It is the way unfavorable truth is passed on, and often simply the fact that it is passed on, that makes it gossip. It has been defined as a vice enjoyed vicariously. The essence of gossip is gloating over the shortcomings or sins of others, which makes gossip a great sin in itself. A person is never helped by spreading the news of his sin."
Love does not rejoice in unrighteousness. Love does not say, "I probably shouldn't tell you this, but..." In life — and regrettably in the body of Christ as well — we love to gossip. Whether it makes us feel special because we know something others do not, or whatever the motive may be, there is something hideous about this desire to talk and talk, rarely to any helpful end.
I frequently have people say to me, "I told so-and-so I wouldn't say anything about this to anybody, but I want you to know..." And I have to stop them. If you told that person you would not say anything, why are you telling me? If you love your spouse, your family, your friends, if you love the church, do not talk about it.
The greatest compliment I have ever received in my entire life came one day at breakfast with Jerry Smith, someone I had shared breakfast with many times. He said, matter-of-factly, "I have never heard you say anything bad about Susan." That is the greatest compliment I have ever received. Susan is not perfect — but why would you share something that would cause someone to think less of her? Every person in this room is married to someone whose reputation you could destroy in three or four minutes, telling the truth, but spreading only a portion of who that person really is. Why would you do that? You do not love that person if you talk about them that way.
Love Rejoices with Truth
The last five traits Paul describes are positive. Recall that in verses 4 through 7 there are fifteen traits in total — seven positive and eight negative. We have just examined the negative side: love does not rejoice in unrighteousness. Here is the other side: love rejoices with truth — and especially with God's truth, the Word of God.
Paul writes to his protégé Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 4, verses 1 through 4: "I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is the judge of the living and the dead, by His appearing in His kingdom: preach the Word. Be ready in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine. But wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires, and they will turn away their ears from truth and will turn aside to myths."
This is the same idea the Old Testament writer conveys in Judges chapter 17, verse 6: "In those days there was no king in Israel, and every man did what was right in his own eyes." The issue, then, is truth.
Truth and Interpretation
A couple of weeks ago I watched a discussion on C-SPAN about the Constitution of the United States, featuring Justice Breyer and Justice Scalia. I will say that if there were a hundred items to know and understand in that discussion, I grasped perhaps four of them — I did not follow the nuances of the law at all. But what I did see emerge from the discussion was a battle over interpretation. Justice Breyer argued that the Constitution is a living document — changing, morphing, shaped by culture and time.
Interpreting Scripture: Authorial Intent
Justice Scalia was saying no, it's a document, and we interpret it in light of what they intended when they wrote it. As I was watching this unfold, I realized that is exactly the discussion we are having over Scripture. You have one side saying, listen, there it is, and it has some truth in it, but it's a living document, and after all, it was written a long time ago, in a particular culture. The other side would say, no, even a basic principle of interpretation is authorial intent — what did the author mean when he wrote the words?
The premise we would bring to this is to say, a timeless God does not produce dated material. My observation has been that when somebody says this book has some great teaching and some great thoughts in it, and there is some truth in it, but it's not all true — the challenge then becomes, find the truth. What I've observed is that people tend to think what is true is simply the things they like. So they hit something like "husbands love your wives, wives should submit to their husbands," and say, he was having a bad day when he wrote that, or that just means line up under love, sort of, maybe, perhaps.
If in fact you love, you rejoice with God's truth even when it's what you don't want to hear — even when you say, that's really difficult for me, I don't get that, I don't even want to do that. But we do what's right because it's right, even if it doesn't feel right. We do what's right because it's right until it feels right. That is a wonderful truth.
Love Bears All Things
Now look at verse 7. He groups four things together here: love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. There are really just subtle nuances between them. As we're dealing with people, love bears all things — it means literally to cover up. Love covers all things. We still have to deal with sin; we know sin is sin, and we have to deal with it. But love protects people.
Peter writes this in 1 Peter chapter 4, verse 8. Peter certainly understood — and we'll talk about it in a moment — he understood failure and love and forgiveness. He writes, "Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins." That word fervent is the picture of a racer running with every muscle strained, striving to the very end of a race.
The commentators can't even fully agree on exactly what Peter is saying here — whether he's talking about God's love for us covering our sins, or our love for one another overlooking and bearing one another's transgressions. But either way, the principle is clear: love bears all things.
Love Believes All Things
So how do you respond when you've been given privilege and information? Here it is — love believes all things. First of all, it believes God and His promises. When we read this book, we understand that the promises He made are timeless promises — most of them, unless they are specifically given to a specific person or group at a specific time. But when He says "whosoever will," that's us. You're a whosoever. God's promises are for you; He won't leave you, He won't forsake you — assuming you're His child. So it is believing God.
But it is also a bigger idea than that. It's believing in people. As 1 Corinthians 13 expresses it, love is ready to believe anything that has a ground of reality to it. Love is always ready to start over. Love always believes the best about other people.
I had a wonderful day yesterday. The kids were over the other night and something came up, and I said I wanted to use it as an illustration. The next morning at breakfast, Tyler gave me a book and said, if you're going to use that for an illustration, you ought to read this book. So yesterday I sat on the back porch most of the day and read it. Let me read you one sentence from that book — this is a great sentence: "God's grace is powerful enough to change anybody, anytime, anywhere." Let's read that again. God's grace is powerful enough to change anybody, anytime, anywhere.
Those are sweet words to me. For thirty years I lived in exactly the opposite way — whatever these definitions are here, all fifteen of them, I lived in the exact opposite direction. I was consumed with seeking my own. All I cared about was me. That is the very definition of the opposite of love. The opposite of love isn't hate — the opposite of love is pride. Stretched a bit further, the opposite of love can be apathy in some situations, but at its core, the opposite of love is pride and arrogance and self-absorption. I reached a point in my own life where I wondered if even God could forgive me — and even if He did, I couldn't imagine Him being that interested in me.
God's Grace Is Powerful Enough
God's grace is powerful enough. If you are sitting here today, I want you to put your name in that sentence. God's grace is powerful enough to change you at any time and in any place. If you are here today and you did not take communion — if you say you are not a follower of Christ — God's grace is powerful enough to change you right here, right now.
Or maybe you truly are a child of His, but you have exhibited everything but Christ-likeness in your life. Maybe you are exactly the opposite of this person described in 1 Corinthians 13. Maybe you are not patient with others. Maybe the last thing you are concerned about is anybody else, and it's all about you. God will forgive you. Even if you have been walking with Him for a long period of time, God's grace is powerful enough to change anybody, anytime, anyplace.
Love Hopes All Things
You can see how that carries us right into the next thing: love hopes all things. And if we were really to put...
Love Endures All Things
Love endures all things. In God's economy, it is important to understand that failure is never final. Failure is never fatal. By very definition, God is using people in His kingdom who have failed, who have missed the mark, who have sinned. There are biblical illustrations that bring this to life, and this is one we want to go after here.
Peter's Boast Before the Denial
Turn to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 22, verse 54. To understand this passage, some background is important. When you get to Luke 22:54, Jesus' arrest has already taken place. He has been through the Garden of Gethsemane, and now we are going to look at Peter.
Let me give a little background that is really important. In Matthew chapter 26, verse 31, Jesus said to His disciples, "You will all fall away because of Me this night, for it is written, I will strike down the shepherd and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered. But after I have been raised, I will go ahead of you to Galilee." Peter said to Him, "Even though all may fall away because of You, I will never fall away." Jesus said, "Truly, I say to you, this very night before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times." And Peter said to Jesus, "Even if I have to die with You, I will not deny You."
That is the backdrop — spoken just hours before the very scene we are looking at in Luke 22.
The Denial in the Courtyard
Luke 22, verse 54: "And having arrested Him, they led Him away and brought Him to the house of the high priest. But Peter was following at a distance, and after they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and had sat down together, Peter was sitting among them."
You get the scene. Jesus has been arrested and taken away. There is a fire, there is a courtyard, a group of people gathered around. Peter was following at a distance, getting a little closer, getting cold, coming to warm up. "A servant girl, seeing him at the fire, looked intently at him and said, 'This man was with Him, Jesus, too.' But Peter denied it, saying, 'Woman, I do not know Him.' A little later, another saw him and said, 'You are one of them, too.' And Peter said, 'Man, I am not.'"
"After about an hour had passed, another man began to insist, saying, 'Certainly this man also was with Him, for he is a Galilean.'" There is probably a discussion going on — his dialect is giving him away. You sound like a Galilean. Certainly you were with Him. "And Peter said, 'Man, I do not know what you are talking about.' And immediately, while he was still speaking, a cock crowed."
Peter had said he did not care what all the others did. It did not matter if everyone else left — he would never leave. If he had to die, he would die before he denied Jesus. And yet, three times: I never knew Him. I never knew Him. I never knew Him.
The Look That Said Everything
All four Gospels record this denial, but Luke's account gives us something the others do not, in verse 61: "And the Lord turned and looked at Peter." That detail makes everything come alive. At the very moment Peter spoke those words, his eyes came into contact with the eyes of Jesus. There was eye-to-eye contact between Jesus and Peter.
Think about what that must have felt like. When dealing with children, you always have to say, "Look up at me. Look me in the eye." Our eyes dart away when we are ashamed. You can tell when someone is lying — ask them a question, and if that first glance goes away before the answer comes, they are giving it away. Their eyes betray them.
Imagine this moment for Peter. You are not going to fail any bigger than this. "I'll never deny You — I'll die first." He did not last but a few hours. "Peter remembered the words the Lord had told him: 'Before a cock crows today, you will deny Me three times.' And he went out and wept bitterly."
Failure Is Not Final
If that were all we had, we would say, what a sorry sight. You might conclude that God could ultimately forgive Peter — after all, he was one of the first to see the empty tomb on resurrection morning. But God did not just forgive him. He used him in a powerful way. That is what we need to see. If you have blown it, if you have failed, it is not final and it is not fatal. God will forgive, and not just forgive — God will use you in an extraordinary way. That is exactly what He did with Peter.
Peter Transformed at Pentecost
Turn to the book of Acts, chapter 2. This is Pentecost. The Holy Spirit has come upon the church as they are gathered together. Verse 14: "Peter, taking his stand with the eleven, raised his voice and began to preach." He delivers a marvelous sermon about Jesus. Verse 23: "Delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death. And God raised Him again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it is impossible for Him to be held in its power."
As you read these early sermons in the church, almost always the focal point is the resurrection. The crucifixion and the resurrection are never separate — but the resurrection stands at the center. If Jesus truly rose from the dead, then He is something unlike any other man, and He is someone to be believed.
Peter delivers this powerful message, and verse 37 tells us: "They heard this, they were pierced to their hearts, and they said to Peter, 'What shall we do?' And Peter said to them, 'Repent.'"
God's Grace and the Power to Change
Luke tells us in verse 41, "Those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls." God's grace is powerful enough to change anybody, anytime, anywhere. You are not the exception to that either.
In chapter 3 of the book of Acts, Peter heals a man who is lame and continues to preach. In chapter 4, he is brought before the authorities to give an explanation for what he is doing, and he repeats the sermon from before — this time in a short, concise summary. Acts chapter 4, verse 12 is a classic verse: "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved." The authorities tell him to go away and say no more.
Now, this is the man who denied Christ three times — and look at what he says in verse 20: "We cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and what we have heard." Failure is not fatal. Failure is not final. God's grace is powerful enough to change anybody, anytime, anywhere.
Love Endures All Things
Paul closes this discussion on love by saying that love endures all things. Love holds fast to what it loves. The word "endures" is a military term used to speak of an army holding a vital position.
God's grace is powerful enough to change anybody, anytime, anywhere. There is no insignificant person, no insignificant situation, and nothing too small to bring before God.
Are You a Lover?
We started on this three weeks ago, and the question was: are you a lover? Are you a lover in God's terms and on God's terms? Paul gives us a definition of love so that it is not only defined, but commended to you and me — and then we take it and measure who we are and how we measure up.
We go back to Matthew chapter 5, verse 16, because that is the key verse for this series: "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father in heaven." The heart attitude is what matters — not getting distracted by the works themselves, the disciplines, the fasting, the prayer, the giving, the solitude, and all that goes with them. Let people see something different about you, and then let them glorify your Father in heaven.
When we started this series, we said there are two components to that verse. First, I make the invisible God visible — they see my good works. Second, I speak the truth boldly. You cannot separate those two things. This is the kind of life we are supposed to live.
Worship Is More Than a Song
When we gathered this morning, the second song we sang was a new song by Chris Tomlin, and the idea is that you and I were made for worship. We are on a quest — and we will talk about this through the balance of the series — to help you understand that worship is not just music and choirs and instruments. Worship is certainly what we sing, but it is far more than that.
When we come together, we do not separate our song from our study of His Word, our communion, our serving the children, our smiling and greeting someone. Everything here is an act of worship. It is not just limited to song, not just limited to Sunday, not just limited to this campus. Our whole life is about worshiping God.
Everything we do is about glorifying God — whether you eat or drink, the simplest of things, or those tasks that are great in your economy and mine. All of it is about worshiping God and who He is.
Making God Known in Your World
We made this simple point about the command to have others glorify your Father in heaven: there is no way they will do that unless you tell them to. If they simply see your good works, they will glorify you. They will say you have a wonderful disposition, that you are something special. And our privilege is to say, "It is not me — it is the God that you see in me."
My whole life then becomes consumed with making Christ evident and known — not to the world, which is far too vast, but to your world, your sphere of influence. That opportunity can come even today. Many of you are going to gather this afternoon and will have the chance to let people see your good works, and then the privilege of telling them, showing them, glorifying your Father in heaven.
Closing Prayer
Father, we pray that You would make us lovers — that we would be patient and kind, not jealous, not boastful, not arrogant, and that we would not act unbecomingly or seek our own. God, let us not be easily provoked. Father, do not let us keep score or rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoice in truth. Father, let us be people who bear all things and believe all things and hope in all things and endure in all things.
God, we cannot do that on our own. Our natural response is to retaliate, to not forget and not forgive, to seek our own. That is why we come before You quietly and ask You to change our hearts. Help us live and act, think and behave in a way that is supernatural. Father, we love You because You first loved us, and we know that You call us to a very high calling to live this way supernaturally.
God, we pray that You would help each one of us understand that we were made to worship You — that everything we say, everything we do, every thought we have would bring You praise. We pray that You would use us in a powerful way. In Christ's name, amen.
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