FIRST MESSAGE
A Speaking of Life video presentation …
- Hitting Too Close to Home
- Heber Ticas
Have you ever uttered the words, “That hit just a little too close to home?” It’s a familiar phrase we use when something is said that makes us feel uncomfortable or embarrassed because it touches on a sensitive or personal subject. The words spoken may be neutral or even positive, but if it connects in a personal way, we may try to put distance between us and what was said. So, we say something like, “That hits a little too close to home. Let’s talk about something else.”
Have you ever considered that hearing the Good News of Jesus Christ may have the same effect? The Gospel is the good news that God’s grace and love, forgiveness, mercy, and reconciliation have been given to all in Jesus Christ. We may at first hear such a proclamation with warmth and joy but then some implications for us personally come to mind.
For example, if God has forgiven my worst enemy, I may have to forgive them too. Or, if God has reconciled all to himself in Jesus, then I may be expected to seek reconciliation with certain people I rather not have anything to do with.
Or, more personally. If Jesus is Savior of the whole world, then I will have to trust him as my personal savior. I’ll have to admit that I need saving and that I cannot save myself. In short, I’ll have to turn around and trust in this one who has saved me. You may want to respond with, “That is hitting just a little too close to home. Let’s talk about something else.”
Or the Spirit may be breaking in to form in you a different and better response. Perhaps a response like we see in Psalm 71:
In you, O Lord, I take refuge; let me never be put to shame. In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me; incline your ear to me and save me. Be to me a rock of refuge, a strong fortress, to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress. Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and cruel. For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth. Upon you I have leaned from my birth; it was you who took me from my mother’s womb. My praise is continually of you.
Psalm 71:1-6 (NRSV)
If you feel like God’s Word is hitting a little too close to home today, consider this response of trust, and take refuge in him. In his love for you, the Father never takes back his Word. He means to “hit close to home” because our true home is with him.
Mi nombre es Heber Ticas, Hablando de Vida.
TEXT FOR TODAY
1 Corinthians 13:1-13 NRSVue | 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 NLT |
1 If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. |
1 If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. |
3 If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body (to be burned) so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing. | 3 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it;[a] but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing. |
4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; | 4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. |
6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. | 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. |
8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. | 8 Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! |
9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. | 9 Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! 10 But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless. |
11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. | 11 When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. |
12 For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. | 12 Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. |
13 And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love. | 13 Three things will last forever — faith, hope, and love — and the greatest of these is love. |
WHAT CAN WE TAKE AWAY?
1 Corinthians 13:1-3 NRSVue If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast[a] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
From the GCI Lectionary … | From Barclay’s commentary … |
The necessity of love
The first three verses of this section speak to the necessity of love. Paul does not argue that we should dispense with spiritual gifts and only have love. Rather, what Paul advocates is that love should be the controlling factor of how we use those gifts. For Paul, to “have love” is to speak and act towards others in the same way God has spoken and acted toward us in Christ. So, we cannot detach love as some generic feeling or ideal that we possess apart from the revelation of Jesus Christ. Paul takes issue with the Corinthian church for masking many sins under a label of “spirituality.” Other chapters in the letter record Paul’s correction of the Corinthian church for their tolerance and even endorsement of sexual immorality, greed, and idolatry. They did this while using certain gifts, like speaking in tongues, as a claim to spirituality. But their actions clearly indicate that they claimed a spirituality based on certain religious trappings while endorsing and even acting out a debased Christian ethic devoid of the love we see displayed in Jesus Christ. The love Paul speaks of is defined by the concrete act of Jesus coming to die for the sins of the world. That love certainly does not endorse the various sins our society would like to push. Notice the theme of the language used in Paul’s comparisons to illustrate the necessity of love. He begins with speaking in tongues since that gifting seems to be the prevailing claim to spirituality. But he also includes things like prophecy, knowledge, faith, charitable acts, and self-sacrifice. Paul certainly does not say these things are bad or meaningless. Rather, these all reflect “religious” language and “spirituality.” The Corinthian church seemed to be more interested in their spiritual appearance than in actual love for their neighbor. Paul uses these comparisons with emphatic statements to show how they all amount to nothing without love. So, to just say or do “good” things is not enough. If those things do not build up the church, or edify the body of Christ, or bear witness to Jesus in our world, then we are no better than a “clanging cymbal.” That’s an interesting illustration Paul chooses to begin with since “clanging cymbals” were also used in many of the surrounding pagan cults. This seems to be a nod that their claim to spirituality by exhibiting certain gifts without having love was tantamount to being no better than the empty pagan culture around them.
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THE HYMN OF LOVE
For many this is the most wonderful chapter in the whole New Testament and we will do well to take more than one day to study words whose full meaning not a lifetime itself would be sufficient to unveil. Paul begins by declaring that a man may possess any spiritual gift, but if it is unaccompanied by love it is useless. (i) He may have the gift of tongues. A characteristic of heathen worship, especially the worship of Dionysus and Cybele, was the clanging of cymbals and the braying of trumpets. Even the coveted gift of tongues was no better than the uproar of heathen worship if love was absent. (ii) He may have the gift of prophecy. We have already seen that prophecy corresponds most closely to preaching. There are two kinds of preachers. There is the preacher whose one aim is to save the souls of his people and who woos them with the accents of love. Of no one was that more true than of Paul himself. Myers, in his poem St. Paul, draws the picture of him looking at the Christless world, “Then with a thrill the intolerable craving Shivers throughout me like a trumpet call — O to save these — to perish for their saving — Die for their lives, be offered for them all.” On the other hand there is the preacher who dangles his hearers over the flames of hell and gives the impression that he would rejoice in their damnation as much as in their salvation. It is told that Sir George Adam Smith once asked a member of the Greek Church, which has suffered much at the hands of Islam, why God had created so many Mohammedans, and received the answer, “To fill up hell.” The preaching which is all threat and no love may terrify but it will not save. (iii) He may have the gift of intellectual knowledge. The permanent danger of intellectual eminence is intellectual snobbery. The man who is learned runs the grave danger of developing the spirit of contempt. Only a knowledge whose cold detachment has been kindled by the fire of love can really save men. (iv) He may have a passionate faith. There are times when faith can be cruel. T here was a man who visited his doctor and was informed that his heart was tired and he must rest. He telephoned his employer, a notable Christian figure, with the news, only to receive the answer, “I have an inward strength which enables me to carry on.” These were the words of faith but a faith which knew no love and was therefore a hurting thing. (v) He may practise what men call charity; he may dole out his goods to the poor. There is nothing more humiliating than this so-called charity without love. To give as a grim duty, to give with a certain contempt, to stand on one’s own little eminence and throw scraps of charity as to a dog, to give and to accompany the giving with a smug moral lecture or a crushing rebuke, is not charity at all — it is pride, and pride is always cruel for it knows no love. (vi) He may give his body to be burned. Possibly Paul’s thoughts are going back to Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego and the burning fiery furnace (Dn.3). Perhaps more likely, he is thinking of a famous monument in Athens called “The Indian’s Tomb.” There an Indian had burned himself in public on a funeral pyre and had caused to be engraved on the monument the boastful inscription: “Zarmano-chegas, an Indian from Bargosa, according to the traditional customs of the Indians, made himself immortal and lies here.” Just possibly, he may have been thinking of the kind of Christian who actually courted persecution. If the motive which makes a man give his life for Christ is pride and self-display, then even martyrdom becomes valueless. It is not cynical to remember that many a deed which looks sacrificial has been the product of pride and not of devotion. Hardly any passage in scripture demands such self-examination from the good man as this. |
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 NRSVue Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
From the GCI Lectionary … | From Barclay’s commentary … |
Paul now moves on to describe the character of love. In doing so, he does not allow any room for any idealistic conceptions of love that fall outside the revelation of God’s love toward us as seen in Jesus Christ.
The character of love Paul includes fifteen descriptors to detail the character of love. The first two are positive statements, “Love is patient” and “love is kind.” These two statements taken together show that love plays both a passive and active role toward others. These statements point to the work of Christ towards us. He took our sins upon Himself and patiently endured them all the way to the cross, while at the same time exercised great kindness toward us and gave us all things that belong to Him. Then Paul moves to list seven characteristics of love with statements of what it does NOT do. This list seems tailor-made for the Corinthian church. Each statement adds up, and essentially Paul says that love is not what you have been doing. Ouch! This list would make a wonderful study on its own and would be worth going through one statement at a time. The next two descriptions, “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth” probably are meant to be treated as two sides of the same coin. Here again we see a description of who Jesus is toward us and who God is in His very heart and character. God is a God of truth and because of that He cannot and will not affirm evil. If we truly live out the love of the Father poured out to us by the Spirit, we will celebrate and stand for all that is good while at the same time not entertaining or supporting that which is not aligned with the truth. Paul then concludes his list. He adds four more characteristics that love “always” does: protects, trusts, hopes, and perseveres. Included here are both faith (trust) and hope which are the other two great Christian virtues. One thing Paul’s multiple descriptions of love provides for us is a list of checks and balances for our conceptions of love. We must hold all of them together. Otherwise, we could risk seeing love as just “kindness” towards everyone without resisting evil or holding accountable that which does not benefit everyone. In other words, love is not just a feel-good sentimentality. We should not treat others contrary to the way God has treated us in Jesus Christ. Paul’s list also gives us an opportunity to see an epiphany of who God has revealed Himself to be in Jesus Christ. We could go back and substitute the name “Jesus” where it refers to “love” and it would read as an accurate picture of who God is in His very heart and character. That may be an exercise to do on your own. However, Paul means this list to be a point of reflection for the Corinthian church. So, we could also go back and substitute our name for “love” and see how we are doing. Where is there a call to repentance and an opportunity to receive more of the love the Spirit has for us? That too would be a good exercise to engage in personally.
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THE NATURE OF CHRISTIAN LOVE
In 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 Paul lists fifteen characteristics of Christian love.
One thing remains to be said — when we think of the qualities of this love as Paul portrays them we can see them realized in the life of Jesus himself. |
1 Corinthians 13:8-13 NRSVue 8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12 For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love.
From the GCI Lectionary … | From Barclay’s commentary … |
The permanence of love Paul now concludes as he proclaims the permanence of love. This section begins with “Love never fails.” That is a statement of permanence the Corinthian church needs to measure against the temporary nature of spiritual gifts, which Paul states, ultimately pass away and disappear. Paul is trying to redirect their understanding of being “spiritual” to that which is eternal. Paul does not devalue gifts, but rather highlights the importance of using those gifts to serve the purpose of love. If they do not use their gifts to build up the church, to edify and honor their brothers and sisters, and Paul himself, but use them for their own self-gain, then they essentially act like little children who have not grown up or like people who have confused a reflection in a mirror for a real person. Paul concludes as he places love alongside faith and hope. In this way, he shows that love is in a whole different category and should not be equated with spiritual gifts. Faith, hope, and love continue in the present in all we do and say in the church. However, even here our faith will one day become sight, and our hope will be fulfilled when Jesus returns with His kingdom. And that kingdom will be one of love. In that way, Paul pushes the permanence of love to the very end. This is a point in the passage where we can take a good look at ourselves and see if our efforts are aligned with what is eternal, or if we simply seek to achieve some temporary status in the present day. Those who belong to the church are called to be witnesses and citizens of another kingdom — God’s kingdom that will never fade. This world and all it claims to offer is nothing in comparison to where King Jesus is taking us. Jesus is real, and the love of the Father revealed in Him will never fail.
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THE SUPREMACY OF LOVE
In 1 Cor.13:8-13 Paul has three final things to say of this Christian love. (i) He stresses its absolute permanency. When all the things in which men glory have passed away love will still stand. In one of the most wonderfully lyrical verses of scripture The Song of Solomon (SS.8:7) sings, “Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.” The one unconquerable thing is love. That is one of the great reasons for believing in immortality. When love is entered into, there comes into life a relationship against which the assaults of time are helpless and which transcends death. (ii) He stresses its absolute completeness. As things are, what we see are reflections in a mirror. That would be even more suggestive to the Corinthians than it is to us. Corinth was famous for its manufacture of mirrors. But the modern mirror as we know it, with its perfect reflection, did not emerge until the thirteenth century. The Corinthian mirror was made of highly polished metal and, even at its best, gave but an imperfect reflection. It has been suggested that what this phrase means is that we see as through a window made with horn. In those days windows were so made and all that could be seen through them was a dim and shadowy outline. In fact the Rabbis had a saying that it was through such a window that Moses saw God. In this life Paul feels we see only the reflections of God and are left with much that is mystery and riddle. We see that reflection in God’s world, for the work of anyone’s hands tells us something about the workman, we see it in the Gospel and we see it in Jesus Christ. Even if in Christ we have the perfect revelation, our seeking minds can grasp it only in part, for the finite can never grasp the infinite. Our knowledge is still like the knowledge of a child. But the way of love will lead us in the end to a day when the veil is drawn aside and we see face to face and know even as we are known. We cannot ever reach that day without love, because God is love and only he who loves can see him. (iii) He stresses its absolute supremacy. Great as faith and hope are, love is still greater. Faith without love is cold, and hope without love is grim. Love is the fire which kindles faith and it is the light which turns hope into certainty. |
CLOSING SONG
CLOSING PRAYER
ANNOUNCEMENTS
1. Notes for today’s meeting can be seen on our website, under RECENT POSTS
2. Reminder:
- Next Sunday is the first Sunday of next month
- So, we plan to have our next FACE-TO-FACE church meeting next Sunday, starting at 10:00 a.m.
- We’re inviting our ONLINE family members to join us in the communion ceremony … by preparing their own emblems (bread/cracker and wine/grape juice) to partake of.