You know, people talk about key
verses in scripture and key chapters. There is such a thing. All scripture
is profitable. It's profitable for reproof and
rebuke, for instruction in righteousness and to furnish believers in every
good work. But this is a key chapter because
it deals with that which is the greatest. That word is in the
is in the it's the greatest grace that God bestows upon his sheep. Love. As wonderful as faith is,
and we've looked at that a few times over the years, what a
gift faith is. To be able to believe God and
to do things that we could never do. Remember Hebrews 11, by faith,
so and so did this. And another did that. And what
a wonderful gift that unites us to Christ. But better than
that. And the only sense in which I
can think of love being better than faith is in endurance. Faith will turn to sight. We
don't need faith in glory when we're with Christ. We don't need
faith. But we will need love. We will have love like we've
never known. But it speaks of the greatest
thing. And so I want to go through this chapter carefully. And thoroughly,
we never pick up a tenth of 1% of what's in a verse. You could hear, we could just
preach on this chapter the rest of our lives, and we'd never
see everything. But the Lord does give light,
and I pray for that light, and for us to have some understanding
of what the Lord has put before us tonight. Love suffereth long
and is kind. The title of last week's message
was Love Doth, It Doth Suffer Long, It Doth, It Is Kind, What
It Is, it's the positive. But now we're in the, it says
love envieth not, what it doesn't do. And so that's the next few
phrases. And we'll begin tonight by sort
of looking at a review of the first part of verse four. But
then we'll pray and hope that the Lord will show us the rest of it too. Sorry,
it's taken me a second to get set up here. Okay. In verse four, love suffereth
long. We spoke about that. Love doesn't
come and go. It endures. It doesn't quickly vanish like natural love
does. This love is the fruit of the
spirit. It's divine love. It's love that only believers
possess, that we said all these things. But we need to keep that
in mind as we go forward. This is a love that's not universal. It's not something everybody
possesses at all. Some people do not love God.
Most people do not love God at all, no matter how many times
they sing that they do or say that they do. They just don't.
They don't love the God of the scripture. And they're not gonna
be capable of it. They're gonna have some grace
from God. The greatest gift, the greatest grace is love. Suffers long and is kind. What a thing that this world
glaringly lacks. It's just simple kindness. Just
simple kindness. I've read a lot of theological
books over the years. I've never seen one deal with
the doctrine of kindness. Somehow that gets overlooked
with all the eye-dotting and T-crossing. Love envieth not. Love faunteth not itself is not
puffed up. And those three nots sound very
similar, but they're not the same. And I want to point something
out at the outset, but ask you to be careful not to misunderstand
something as I do. This chapter is talking about
our love. It's talking about love as it
exists in us and is expressed by us. That's clearly evident
from the beginning of the chapter, though I speak, though I speak
with the tongues of men and of angels, and I have not love.
I'm just noise, me. The next two verses start with,
and though I, and though I. So this is talking about a characteristic
of God's people. I'll remind you again what the
Lord Jesus said to Simon. Do you love me? Do you love me? So remember that. But don't misunderstand,
don't miss the fact that this is God's love. It's the fruit
of his spirit. It's an attribute of who he is. God is love. There is no love
apart from him. The love that's in us, expressed
by us, the fruit of the spirit that's born by us is not apart
from God. This love is shed abroad in the
hearts of sinners, particularly God's sheep. But only Christ
epitomizes this love because love is who he is. It's who he
is. Our love is derived from him. It's ours. We love. The Lord didn't ask Simon, does
the Holy Spirit love me? He said, do you? Do you? We are the recipients of it.
We express it. It changes us. And we shine its
light. But he is the light. That's what
we need to get some perspective on. It is talking about us. But it's talking about love that
we were not born with and would never know, apart from God's
grace, the divine love of Christ in us. Christ and what he did
for sinners is the definition of love, as we know from 1 John.
He is himself love. So you put these two clear truths
together that seem contradictory, This is our love we're talking
about, but it's God's love we're talking about. You put those
together and we come to understand that what
this chapter is speaking of is Christ in us. If we want to see
the personification of this love, we've got to look to him. What we see when we look to ourselves
in this, It's what we always see when we look to ourselves,
how we need him, how we need him. We're thankful for his love
shed abroad in us and his love expressed in some sense through
us. But we don't look to our love
for hope. We don't look to our love to admire. We see when we look to ourselves
always the same thing. We need Him. I'll show you that
in Romans 7. Let's turn over there to Romans
chapter 7. Now Paul describes in some detail,
let's think about what's happening in Romans 7, what this is talking
about. In most of this chapter, he's
describing what it's like to have Christ in you and be a sinner. To be in this flesh, but also
to be born again of the Spirit of God, born from above. with
the very life of God in us. He's describing what that's like
in great detail. To have the sinful nature that
we're born with and to also be a new creation, be born again
with a new nature that is created according to scripture in righteousness
and true holiness, the nature of Christ. And there are two
things about the experience of that that I want us to, I guess,
shine on our text, that I want us to consider as
we go through chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians, this chapter about true divine
love. As we've seen, it has to do with
a new nature. It's not love that we're born
with. It's not love that we can come up with. It's not love we
can develop or nurture, we don't have it apart from God in us. So two things from Romans 7 that
I want us to consider as part of chapter 13, or part of the
understanding of it. First of all, Paul said in verse
22, I delight in the law of God after the inward man. You think
about that for a minute. And this is not all he said about
the law of God. He said a lot about the law of
God in Romans chapter seven. This is sort of a summation of
it. He speaks of God's righteousness
and holiness and what God requires in his law. His word is what
it is, because everything God says is law. But he said a lot about that
and sort of summed it up with this, I delight in the law of
God after the inward man. In other words, that which condemns
me, that which signs my ticket to hell, I love it. It's true, it's good, it's holy. I'm the problem, not the law. That's the work of grace. To
love God's word, to love what he said is to love him. And he
said that in Romans 7 with the clear qualification that in himself there was no good thing. There
was no good thing. But I love the law. It's good
and right. It's holy. It's an expression
of God's character. And remember, thinking about
what Paul said, I delight in the law of God, remember what
God said summarizes the law. You remember that? There's three
accounts of it, I believe, at least two, and there's one in
Mark 12, 28, and let me read that to you. What are we talking
about when we're talking about the law of God that Paul loves? He loves it. Mark 12 28 and one
of the scribes came and had turn over there with me because this
is a fairly long chapter We may see a couple of things in here As we read it Mark 12 In verse 28 So we're talking about what goes
on in the heart of a saved sinner with the two natures that the
scripture says the law, the spirit warth against the flesh and the
flesh against the spirit. And that's what's going on and
how that applies to our text. Mark 12, 28. And one of the scribes
came and having heard them reasoning together and perceiving that
he, Christ, had answered them well, asked him, which is the
first commandment of all? And Jesus answered him, the first
of all the commandments is, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is
one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with
all thy strength. This is the first commandment,
and the second is like, namely this, thou shalt love thy neighbor
as thyself. There is none other commandment
greater than these. You think that's what our chapter,
our text is talking about? Love. What love? Love for what? Love for who?
God and one another? That's the law. That's the law
that Paul loved. The law, the word of God, the
gospel that Paul loved is epitomized. It is Well, let's just leave
it in the language the Lord says in the next verse we're gonna
look at in Matthew 22. So just one second on that, but
look at what comes in the next verse. And the scribe said unto
him, verse 32, well, master, thou hast said the truth, for
there is one God and there is none other but he. And to love
him with all the heart and with all the understanding, and with
all the soul and with all the strength, and to love his neighbor
as himself is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices."
You see, those were according to the law too. God prescribed
what was to be sacrificed, how it was to be sacrificed, where
it was to be sacrificed, when it was to be sacrificed, and
it had to be strictly adhered to. People were turned into lepers
and died. when it wasn't strictly adhered
to. So he's saying, but love is more than all that. You can
offer all the bullocks and goats and sheep that you want, but
if you don't love, like Paul says in our text, you're
nothing. And he understood that, and when
Jesus saw verse 34 that he answered discreetly, he said unto him,
and you think about this, thou art not far from the kingdom
of God. You know what not far from the
kingdom of God is? It's missing the kingdom of God. But you know what he was saying
there clearly? He said, I know this, I know this, you're right.
Love, you're right, there's one God, we're to love him, we're
to love his people, we're to love our neighbor as ourself.
He understood the doctrine in other words. But he didn't know
the person that was standing there talking to him. You're
not far, he literally wasn't far. There are several texts
in scripture where Christ calls himself the kingdom of God. I'm
paraphrasing, but he said to one man and group, if I'm an
imposter, if what you say is true, but he said, if not, if
I'm who I say I am, then the kingdom of God is coming to you.
The kingdom of God. So he's talking about himself
here. You're not far. But that one thing thou lackest. What was the one thing that man
lacked? He didn't love Christ. You know
that that's the great commandment, but you can't do it. That's what
Paul said in our text. That's the second thing we're
gonna look at, not in our text, in Romans 7. That's the next
thing where I said there are two things in Romans 7 I want
us to see. And this is still the first one now. To love with
all the heart. That's the law. All of the law
and the prophets is contained in that love, which is the subject
of our text, our chapter. Turn with me to Matthew 22. Please. Matthew 22-34. But when the Pharisees had heard
that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered
together. Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question,
tempting him and saying, Master, which is the great commandment
in the law? That was the question before, which is the first commandment?
But he's talking about first and importance, not everybody
can look and see which one came first on the tablets of stone.
He's talking about which is the great, which is the great commandment,
which is the most important. And Jesus said unto him, verse
37, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and
with all thy soul and with all thy mind. This is the first and
great commandment. And the second is like unto it,
thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments
hang all the law and the prophets. And Paul says, I love that law.
That law that commands me to love God and to serve him and
to obey him. If you love me, keep my commandments. True love is obedience to him,
because you can't love the sovereign without bowing to him. So Paul
said, I delight in that law. We look at what our text says
in 1 Corinthians 13, and everybody quotes that. Many people have
memorized that whole chapter, and it's beautiful language.
We delight in that love, just like Paul did. How wonderful
is love like that? How beautiful. And we have that
love? You're saying we? If we're born of God, God has
shed abroad that love in our hearts. We can honestly say,
though we're wretched sinners, I love God. That's marvelous. That's wonder. We can. And we do. But remember what
Paul also said in Romans 7. Here's the second thing. Notwithstanding,
now that God has saved me and now I have his mind, We have the mind of Christ when
it comes to my thinking on him, his law, and my own condition.
We have his mind, and that's wonderful. It's everything. It's
life and death. It's life. But even with the
Holy Spirit of God in me and his fruit, Being loved, when
I look to myself as I am in this sinful flesh, I must also say
with Paul, verse 18 of Romans 7, for I know that in me that
is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing. And he had to qualify
there. In parentheses, it says that
is in my flesh. In me, that is in me by nature,
in my flesh. Well, it's no good thing. The
Holy Spirit dwells in me. That's a good thing. But in my
flesh, no. In my old nature, the old man,
no good thing. And listen to how that plays
out, how that's experienced. For the good, that I would, I
do not. The good that I want to do, I
would not. To will is present with me. I want to obey God's
law. God's law is good and right and
holy and just, and I love him, I love it, I want to obey him,
but how to perform that which is good, I find not. I can't do it. That's where that
man was. He said, you're not far from
the kingdom of God. He could know the doctrine. You can figure
that out. You can mentally understand.
You can recite it. You can argue with people and
prove that you know more than they do, but you can't love the
son of God unless he has mercy on your soul. And that's what Paul was saying,
that without the new man, without the new nature, I can't do anything. And even with it, as long as
I'm in this flesh, I can't measure up to God's law. I can't perform
that which is good in this flesh. I'm not perfect holy, sin is
mixed with everything I do, even my best deeds. And then he goes on to say, verse
29, if I do that, that I would not, it is no more I that do
it, but sin that dwelleth in me. In other words, there's another
me. If you read chapter seven of
Romans, there's two Pauls. I love the law of God after the
inward man. I would keep the law, but there's
also an I that can't keep the law and hates God and his law
and has no use for God. But he's saying that's not the
real me anymore. That's not the me that God sees.
He sees me in Christ. He sees the new man. He treats
me that way, as having no sin. I find then a law, a principle,
that when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight
in the law of God after the inward man, but I see another law in
my members." When he's saying law here, he's talking about
a principle, a nature. Warring against the law of my
mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in
my members. And listen, this is why I went
through all of this, just sort of talking about the whole chapter
of our text. When we go through this, we see
the love of God and we see it in us. Ah, ah, he kept saying
though, ah. And yet, what is gonna be the
takeaway? Are we gonna study this chapter
and say, look how wonderful we are. Look at the wonderful love
that I have. When Paul examined his two natures
inside of himself, here's his conclusion. Oh, wretched man
that I am. He loved the law, he looked at
the law, he acknowledged that the law was good and right, and
the law is epitomized by love. Our love, divine love, in chapter
13, the love that's in our text. But when he looked, at himself, he says, oh wretched man that
I am, who's gonna save me? Who's gonna save me from the
body of this death? And then he answered his own
question, I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then
with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the
flesh. the law of sin. So think with
me about that and we'll get back to our text. Paul's talking about
having a new nature that loves God and His law and wants to
obey. I would, I would do everything
that God says. I want to. I sure do want to. But the result of him considering
and reasoning out the truth of that, the result is that it drove
him to Christ. As we study this chapter on love,
love that by the grace of God is in us and defines who we are,
we're not love in the sense that Christ is, but how could you
define yourself now without the love of God? If you're a believer,
as we study this chapter, we're We see that who we are in this
is something that God did for us. It's his love shed abroad
in us by him. The food of his spirit, the result
of that study will not be, look how beautiful we are. And oh,
how I love Jesus. That'll be how I need the Savior. How I need the Savior. And with
that in mind, let's consider the next phrase in our text,
love envieth. not. Love doth not. The word envieth is to be heated
or to boil with envy, hatred, and anger. This is not, oh man,
I wish I had that dress, you know. This is, I'll kill you. I will kill you. I hate you. This is Cain murdering Abel. This is us by nature. This is
Saul throwing that spear at David and it's stuck in the wall right
by him. Because the Lord guided that spear and not Saul. This
is me and you by nature. Our natural reaction to seeing
someone else prosper or excel or be blessed of God is to hate
them for it. and to be in a rage over it. This is the son who stayed home. He's seethed with hatred for
the prodigal. This is Satan saying, I will
ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will be like the most
high. Love doesn't do that. Though
that's our nature, love doesn't do that. Love dispels that because
when you love someone, you would rather see them prosper, increase,
than for you yourself to increase. That's just the truth. The spirit that worketh in us
by the grace of God, The spirit that works in us by nature is
the spirit of Satan. You remember that from the scripture.
It's evil, it's lust and vanity. But the spirit of God
working in us says this, let nothing be done through strife
or vainglory, but in lowliness of mind, let each esteem other
better than themselves. That's the spirit that dispels
the jealousy that's in our hearts by nature. Philippians 2, 3.
When you pray, honestly now, are you always praying, Lord,
give me this or give me that or do that for me? Or do you
pray, Lord, my son, my daughter, My wife, my husband, my brethren,
my sisters, please do something for them. They need you. We pray for ourselves and there's
nothing selfish about that. We need it more than anybody
probably. But this is love that is expressed
in our prayers to God. We honestly consider it more
important by His grace that those that we love are blessed and
happy than any consideration for ourselves. That's just the
truth. I'm not bragging. Those of you who really love
somebody know exactly what I'm talking about. That's the love
that God gives us. That's not something that we
can look at and say, look at me, you know, I got great love.
No, it's going to cause us to look to Christ. It's going to
cause us to see our need of him. Because that's not natural. That's
not us. That's not what we do. That's
not how we are by nature. Now, even that prayer can be
selfish. Are you saying, Chris, that people
don't know the Lord, don't pray for their children? Of course
they do. Even that can be selfish, though, without the love of God
in your heart. but true divine love thinks more
on the things of others than on the things of self. We don't hate out of envy the
way we would by nature and do. If one of y'all wins the lottery,
I'm probably gonna hate you for it. Heck, even when some of y'all
just go to the beach, a little bit of hate rises up. No, not
really. If I love you, I'm happy when
you're happy. We all experience that, and I'm sad when you're
sad. If this is just a pipe dream, if we don't experience this,
then we're wasting our time tonight. Is that love in us or not? But
remember, when you look to yourself, the result is gonna be a wretched
man. I love the law of God. I want
to always do that which pleases Him. I love him. I want to feed his sheep, like
he said. I want to love one another. I
want us to love like he taught us to do, like he loved us. We're not gonna see that by looking
at self in the sense of merit or bragging or pride. But we do experience this. When
one of y'all is sad, I'm sad. You don't have to sit there and
think, well, you know, somebody's hurting, and as a Christian,
I should hurt with them, you know. It just happens, doesn't it?
Because there's a new nature. There's a new nature. This love is shed abroad indeed
in the hearts of God's people. Now, I don't even know how to
think about this in the Savior. If the Lord Jesus is love, then
how would you say, how would you see and illustrate that the
Lord doesn't envy? That's interesting, isn't it? I don't know. Can I be honest
with you? I don't know. What I know this
is this, Satan said, I will, I will. That's envy, anger, and
hatred. I will be like the most high
God. In other words, what his purpose
was to do was to cast God out of heaven and be God. The reverse
of that was God cast him out of heaven because he's God. But Satan said, I will, the Savior
said, not my will, but thine be done as a man. He said that instead. Humility
and envy are very much opposed to one another. Envy is a prideful
thing. It's about me, how dare them,
you know. How dare God, and here's the
thing. Our Lord came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.
There's something about our text in that. And selfishness and
envy are opposites. Pride and envy are opposites.
That's why the rest of verse four, I believe, goes together
very closely with this part. Vaunteth not itself. Is not puffed
up. And I want to look more closely
at those phrases next time, but vaunteth means to boast oneself. Envy is something that happens
on the inside, but boasting vaunteth not itself. You don't put yourself
out there as being better and knowing more. You already know anybody like
that? We all got a little bit of that in us, don't we? Some
people are just eating up. I'm a little self-righteous.
And I guess you are too. It just, it seems to characterize
some, and I pray to God it's not me. Vaunteth not itself to boast oneself. Puffed up means
to bear oneself loftily. Very similar, isn't it? You're
vaunting yourself, but the way that you do that is to bear yourself
loftily. In other words, everything you
say and do puts yourself, rather than expressing the truth, you express that which makes
you look best and everybody else look worse than you. You're bearing
yourself loftily to be pretentious, pretense, Pretense, we see a
lot of that in this world, pretense. Attempting to impress, here's
what pretense means. Attempting to impress by affecting,
A-F-F-E-C-T-I-N-G, affecting greater importance or ability
than you actually possess. You see that? Bearing yourself
loftily, pretense. And as I said, I wanna talk more
about that next time, but you see how envy is akin to those.
Loving us is expressed with an eye to our own sin and that of
others. Love doesn't exist apart, this
kind of love doesn't exist apart from knowing who God is. And knowing what we are before
him and our need of him. And we see that in the language
of the chapter now. Love understands that anything
that any of us has short of hell is a gift from God. That's how
you don't envy. You don't envy. That's how you don't,
is to know that everything comes from God. It's not a personal
thing between one another. To envy somebody, a person, a
sinner, is to misplace your anger and hatred and jealousy. God
is the one who gives and takes. God is the one who blesses and
curses. God is the one who raises up
one and puts down another. That's not a difference in men.
That's according to the providence and will of God. So envy really
is mad at God and hates God, not the person. You hate the
person because you can't get to God. Cain would have killed God if
he could have killed God, but instead he killed Abel because
he couldn't kill God. You see that? Who was he mad
at? He murdered the one that God
loved, thinking that would hurt God. And it's always the same. That's
the same envy that's in our hearts. The one that you really have
a problem with is the Lord. And love dispels that kind of
thinking. It dispels it. Remember Psalm
73-1? Let me read you some of that
because we're getting a little bit late. But listen to Psalm
73-1. Truly God is good to Israel. The psalmist says, I know that
now. God is good to his people. even to such as are of a clean
heart, those whom he's cleansed in Christ and his blood. But verse two, but as for me,
my feet were almost gone, my steps had well nigh slipped,
for I was envious at the foolish when I saw the prosperity of
the wicked. That's the envy that we're talking
about. You see that this world, they hate God and yet everything
seems to be going great for them. But who was the psalmist really
mad at here? Who was he really mad at? It
was God that prospered him. It was God that gave him what
they had. It was God that, according to him, was letting them get
away with being evil. But look what he said after he
heard the gospel. He said, I went into the sanctuary. That's where
the word of God was expounded. Psalm 73, 16, when I thought
to know this, it was too painful for me until I went into the
sanctuary of God. Now that picture's Christ. This
is not a sanctuary. Christ is our sanctuary. He's
our protection. Our safety. But he said I went
into the sanctuary where the word is read and expounded. And
then understood I their end. You see, what I see when I look
around at them and I think, man, the Lord's people don't, you
know, all the rich and prosperous people in this world are wicked.
I'm not seeing the true story. But then, after I heard the gospel,
I understood surely thou didst set them in slippery places. Thou castest them down into destruction. How are they brought into desolation,
as in a moment they are utterly consumed with terrors as a dream
when one waketh. So, O Lord, when thou awakest,
thou shalt despise their image. Thus my heart was grieved at
what I had thought before. My steps had well and I slipped. I was envious at the godless. But God taught me better. My
heart was grieved and I was pricked in my reins. So foolish was I
and ignorant I was as a beast before God. Nevertheless, I, he just talked
about them, them, that you're going to destroy them. Their
feet are going to slip. Without remedy, but not mine. Nevertheless, I am continually
with you. That's the difference. That's
the difference between destruction and safety with you. And listen, And he's talking
about my steps, when I slipped. And then he says about them,
you put them in slippery places, and they are gonna slip and fall.
Well, why don't you slip and fall, Asaph or David, whichever
wrote this song? Why aren't you gonna fall? I'm
continually with thee, thou hast holding me by my right hand. Thou shalt guide me with thy
counsel. Hopefully I won't be so dadgum stupid anymore. because
you will tell me the truth and afterward receive me the glory."
No envy now. Why? The sanctuary, Christ, the
gospel, the law, which is love. When the psalmist heard the truth
of God's love in Christ, problem solved. And that'll be the same
way with us. This will cause us, I pray, to
look to Christ. Who's gonna save me? Christ will. He will, he promised he would.
Amen.