Love Is Not Like This

1 Corinthians 13:4-5 | August 2, 2020

Are you a list person?

• Grocery list
• Medicine list
• Homework list
• ToDo list
• Bucket list

Maybe your bucket list sounds like one I saw this week…

• Bucket of chicken
• Bucket of shrimp
• Bucket of popcorn
• Bucket of doughnuts

I also came across an interesting ToDo list. 

It seems to be from Ethan’s little sister when Ethan was going to be away from the house for some reason for a few days and this was her list of things to do in his absence…

• Take Ethan’s bedroom
• Take his money
• Hammer his Legos
• Rip his Minecraft poster
• Dye his carpet pink
• Hammer everything he loves

Bless her heart…and bless Ethan’s Legos.

In the spirit of philosopher J. Marshall Foxworthy, if you have ever made a list and wrote “hammer everything they love” on that list, you might be a redneck…and you might have some love issues.

How do you know if you have love issues?

Well, there’s list. 

It’s not a ToDo list, it’s a ToDon’t list. 

And why is this ToDon’t list so important?

Dr. Haddon Robinson once said this about the church…

Haddon Robinson

Love is that thing which, if a church has it, it doesn’t really need much else, and if it doesn’t have it, whatever else it has doesn’t really matter very much.

That’s not just for churches. 

Love is that thing which, if you have it, you don’t really need much else, and if you don’t have it, whatever else you do have doesn’t really matter very much. 

So, how do you know if you have love?

Well, the ToDon’t list is one way to help you find out.

Listen to 1 Corinthians 13, beginning with verse 4…

4 love…is not jealous;

The Apostle Paul is writing to some folks in a place called Corinth which was in Ancient Greece.

What were people like in Corinth?

• Impatient
• Unkind
• Arrogant
• Selfish
• Overly sensitive
• Rude

In other words, nothing like us. 

None of those things have been seen in our homes or our hospitals or our workplaces or our government buildings or our churches or our communities this past week, right?

As the wise man of the Old Testament said, “There is nothing new under the sun.”

There’s also not a new or different cure for those things. 

What the world needs now is what the world has always needed…love.

Now, we aren’t talking about:

• Intimate love
• Family love
• Friend love

Paul is talking about agape love.

Agape love is a self-denying love that chooses to value people and keep loving people even if love is rejected.

Now, that doesn’t sound like something that is easy to do.

Is there any help?

Yes.

Understanding the ToDon’t list will help and the ToDon’t list says that agape love is not jealous. 

Love is not resentful or mad or snarky when something good happens to someone else.

Love is not snarky when someone gets a good grade.

Love is not snarky when someone gets a promotion. 

Love is not resentful or angry or snarky when someone gets…

• A new car
• A new house
• A new iPhone
• A new Nintendo Switch
• A new pair of Jordans
• A new see-through mask

Love is not resentful or angry or snarky when someone is…

• A better student
• A better worker
• A better athlete
• A better musician
• A better business owner
• A better preacher

But here’s the kicker, love is not resentful or angry or snarky when someone is not better – when they are lazy or inferior or apathetic but they still get the grade or the promotion or the car or the new see-through mask.

Agape love, the kind of love that reflects the pure and perfect love of God is not jealous because a believer keeps turning to the cross to remember that in Christ they have already received the best grade and the highest promotion and the greatest transportation to see them through even the temporary mask of death.

Someone has suggested substituting the name of Jesus in this passage.

Jesus is not jealous.

So, if we claim to follow Jesus, we should strive to be like him.

What’s next on our ToDon’t list?

4 love does not brag

Love does not parade itself and brag about what it is doing.

I saw a great story this week to put this in perspective. 

A turtle wanted to go to Florida for the winter, but he could never walk that far, so, he convinced a couple of geese to help him.

The geese each took one end of a long piece of rope and the turtle clamped his strong jaws down on the middle of the rope and they flew him down to Florida.

Somewhere along the way, the turtle overheard someone on the ground say, “Wow! Look at that! What a great idea! I wonder who thought of that?”

The turtle couldn’t resist a moment to brag and beat on his shell a little, so he opened his mouth and screamed, “I did!”

If you are bragging, then you are not loving. 

Jesus does not brag.

So, if we claim to follow Jesus, we should strive to be like him.

Next on our list is something similar…

4 is not arrogant,

Love is not puffed up or sinfully proud. 

The men and women in my home church that had the deepest impact on my life when I was a young boy and a teenager were mostly humble senior adults that never acted like they were a pillar of the church but just loved God and served people.

We are living in a time of great arrogance where one physician or one politician or one preacher or one parent gets on social media and says they are right and another physician or another politician or another preacher or another parent gets on social media and says that they are right and everyone gravitates to the physician or the politician or preacher or parent that says what they want them to hear.

The Bible says that’s kind of like us wanting to have our itching ears scratched or tickled so we can be comfortable in our sin.

We are living in a time of great arrogance where one person is criticized for kneeling and another person is criticized for standing and another person is criticized for sitting and another person is criticized for lying down.

A time of arrogance where individual freedom has now become the highest moral imperative.

This is what Jesus said…

Luke 9:23

If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.

You cannot deny yourself and pursue your individual freedom as your highest moral imperative at the same time. 

In other words, you cannot follow Jesus and make your individual freedom your highest moral imperative – the math does not work.

I heard someone say if your individual freedom is your highest moral imperative, then don’t ever have a baby or adopt a child or be around your grandchildren, because caring for children is the opposite of individual freedom.

Caring for kids involves sacrifice and self-denial from feedings in the middle of the night to paying tuition in the middle of summer.

Love is not arrogant or sinfully proud or obnoxiously demanding.

Jesus is not arrogant. 

So, if we claim to follow Jesus, we should strive to be like him.

What’s next?

5 does not act unbecomingly;

Love is not rude.

This might be a good time to stop and remind ourselves that we are not perfect. 

We will all have moments of jealousy and bragging and arrogance and rudeness. 

But we don’t need to have many moments like that and if we do, we need to be quicker to repent and seek forgiveness and not keep repeating those things.

Love is not rude.

• Love has good manners
• Love is courteous

For years I have told people in the church that I’m not looking for respect, but I am looking for courtesy. 

I think God’s people should be courteous to one another.

From social media to business meetings to pandemic opinions, if there is any one group of people that should not be rude it should be the people who have been rescued from hell.

Being transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light should impact our manners.

The story is told of a boy who got a parrot for his birthday. 

The parrot was rude and mean and critical and hardly ever stopped talking.

The boy did everything he could to get the parrot to change. 

• He spoke kindly to the parrot
• He played peppy music for the parrot
• He took away his food as a threat
• He yelled at the parrot for being rude

But nothing worked, the parrot was just as mean and talkative as ever.

Finally, the boy was so frustrated he grabbed the parrot and for some reason stuck him in the freezer. 

He could still hear the parrot snapping and snarking through the freezer door. 

After a few moments, though, there was silence. 

The little boy got nervous and quickly opened the door of the freezer and the parrot calmly stepped out on the boy’s arm and said, “I’m sorry that I might have offended you with my language and my actions and ask for your forgiveness. I will endeavor to correct my behavior.”

The boy was shocked and didn’t know what to say. 

The parrot continued and said, “May I ask what the chicken did?”

As a wise sage once said, “Don’t put off eating chocolate if you can do it today.”

Don’t put off being courteous if you can do it today – and you can do it today.

Jesus is not rude. 

So, if we claim to follow Jesus, we should strive to be like him.

What’s next?

5 it does not seek its own,

Especially in times of pandemic and political uproar and educational difficulties, love is not selfish. 

A selfish person is determined to get his or her way regardless of how it might impact other people.

Imagine two players on your favorite team going to the coach after practice to ask how they can get off the bench and get in the starting lineup.

And the coach pulls his whistle out of his mouth and turns to them and says this…

“If you want to be great, if you want to be first, you must be a humble servant to other people.”

That’s what Jesus said and then he said this…

Matthew 20:28

…just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.

I saw where Elisabeth Elliot was once speaking to an audience and there were some children sitting in the front.

She was teaching about serving others and she tried to use a way of explaining it so that those kids could get it too.

Not long after that, one of those kids, a six-year-old boy, wrote her a note and mailed it to her.

Boy

I am learning to lay down my life for my little sister. She has to take a nap in the afternoon. I don’t have to take a nap. But she can’t go to sleep unless I come and lay down beside her.

Love knows when to take a nap – it does not seek its own.

• Love will meet you in the middle
• Love will meet you halfway
• Love will not demand my way or the highway

Jesus is not selfish.

So, if we claim to follow Jesus, we should strive to be like him.

What’s next?

5 is not provoked,

Love is not easily offended or easily angered.

Love has a long fuse. 

Again, none of us are perfect, but generally speaking are we known to be the kind of person that always has their finger on the trigger of snapping at people or freaking out?

Are you easily irritated?

Sometimes we are dangerously tempted to say things like…

• “That’s just how I am.”
• “I just have to get it out real quick and then I’m fine.”

That’s the philosophy of a bomb, too, and it leaves nothing but destruction. 

C.S. Lewis said we are quick to excuse our bad temper.

We say we lose our temper because we are tired or we are hungry or we are stressed out. 

But Lewis says we are perfectly content to own our good temper and say that when we are in a good mood that’s who we really are.

There’s a problem with that, though.

This is what Jesus said…

Luke 6:45

…his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.

• If you are easily offended
• If you are easily irritated
• If you are easily angered

That comes from the inside of your heart.

Jesus is not easily provoked.

So, if we claim to follow Jesus, we should strive to be like him.

What’s next?

5 does not take into account a wrong suffered,

Let’s just go ahead and stop the sermon there.

I mean we don’t really need to follow all of these guidelines for love.

Let’s just pick our top 3 and do our best.

That’s not how it works. 

Love does not keep a record of wrongs. 

Love does not hold a grudge.

Agape love has a really, really bad memory.

There’s two sides to this coin…

Love confesses sin and seeks forgiveness. 

And love forgives.

A loving person is quicker to ask for forgiveness and a loving person is also quicker to forgive people. 

What happens if we are slow to forgive or refuse to forgive?

Paul Tripp gives some interesting “dark” benefits that come with refusing to forgive others – to hold people’s debts over their heads…

• Debt is power – holding something over someone
• Debt is identity – we are self-righteous and act superior to them
• Debt is entitlement – you act like you deserve constant gifts
• Debt is weaponry – we use our hurt to keep hurting them back
• Debt puts us in God’s position – we think we are good judges

By the way, those are all terrible and you don’t want any of that rotting your soul.

Love doesn’t hold that kind of debt over people. 

Let me just say, this might be the hardest one.

When we’ve been wronged it hurts so deeply, especially when the other person is unrepentant or uncaring toward how they’ve hurt you.

But as believers, we don’t have the option of being okay with creating debt in that person’s life. 

Why?

This is what Jesus said…

Matthew 6:15

But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.

That doesn’t mean you can earn forgiveness from God by forgiving other people.

Nor does it mean that if you struggle for a few weeks to forgive someone that you are going to hell.

It simply means this…

If the pattern of your life is not to ask for forgiveness and the pattern of your life is not to forgive other people then what you are saying with your life is that you are settled against God. 

• You are okay with ignoring the cross and all your shame
• You are okay with mocking Jesus and his sacrifice for you
• You are okay with disobeying what God has called you to do

And if those things are true, then with your life you are settling the question of whether you are truly saved or whether you just prayed a prayer and joined a church.

I saw story about a man with a happy soul. 

That man had two pockets.

One pocket he checked on every day to make sure it was in good shape and wasn’t wearing thin or wearing out.

The other pocket had a hole in it and he never even tried to fix it.

Why?

Well, every time he heard an insult or a criticism or rudeness or gossip or slander or malice or any other unkind thing, he would write it down and put that piece of paper in the pocket with the hole in it. 

And every time he heard something good and true and kind and helpful he wrote it down and put that piece of paper in the other pocket – the one that didn’t have a hole in it. 

At the end of the day when he got home, he emptied out his two pockets.

The good pocket was full of good things that he got to relive and enjoy.

But when he reached his hand in the pocket with the hole nothing was there. 

All the rude, evil, unkind things were gone, and he didn’t have to relive them or fret over them. 

So, the moral of that story is be a litterbug and leave your bad news all over town on little pieces of paper. 

No, the moral of that story is this…

Keep a good eye on the pockets of your heart and mind. 

Jesus did not keep a record of your wrongs.

In fact, because he loved you, he died for them.

Keep that in your pocket. 

Message by Dow Welsh |

August 2, 2020 © Holland Avenue Baptist Church

 

 

more |

Above are pre-sermon manuscript notes, not sermon transcript

Sermon scriptures NASB unless otherwise noted

Lots of help from many pastors and theologians

Weekly help from Bruce Hurt at www.preceptaustin.org

https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/five-benefits-of-unforgiveness-then-the-better-way

 

 

So are you a list person? Are you list person to you? You make lists for things. You have a grocery list, a shopping list. A list of your medications may be, ah, homework list. A to do list or a bucket list. Maybe your bucket list looks a little bit like the one I saw this week. Bucket of chicken, bucket of shrimp, bucket of popcorn, bucket of doughnuts. Maybe. Maybe that's how your bucket list rolls. I also saw a to do list this week. That was somewhat interesting. It was a list, it seems like from heathens. Sister thinking maybe his little sister don't know Ethan or his sister. But undoubtedly Ethan was going to be away from the house for a few days. And so his sister made a list of what she was going to do in evens absence. Okay, here's her list. Take heathens. Bedroom, Take heathens. Money hammer, heathens! Legos. Hammer him, rip his Minecraft poster. Die his carpet, pink hammer everything he loves. Bless her heart and bless heathens, Legos. Wow, that's quite list, right? In the spirit of philosopher J. Marshall Foxworthy, if you make a list and on that list you put hammer everything they love. You might be a redneck, and you might have some love issues as well. How do you know if you have love issues? How do you know if you're not just walking around trying toe hammer with a hammer? Everything that everybody loves are Are you actually being loving? How do you know? Well, there's a list. It's not a to do list. It's a so don't list. Yeah, to don't list. And why does the two don't lists matter? Why is it important? Daughter? Hadn't Robinson once said this about the church? Love is that thing, which if a church has it, it doesn't really need much else. And if it doesn't have it, whatever else it does have doesn't really matter very much. It is not just true for churches, right? If you have love, it really doesn't matter what else you have because you have the most important thing. But if you don't have love, whatever else you have, it doesn't matter that much. So how do you know if you have love? How do you know if you have some love issues? And how do you know if love is there. Well, the two don't list helps. It's it's a helper. So we're going to walk through this to Don't list together. Listen to first Corinthians Chapter 13 beginning with Verse four, The Apostle Paul writes. Love is not jealous. Paul's riding to some folks in a place called Corinth and ancient Greece. And what were those folks in court like? Well, they were impatient. They were unkind, They were arrogant, They were selfish, they were overly sensitive. And they were rude. In other words, nothing like us, right? Nothing like us. I mean of us have struggled with any of those things this week, right? We consider those things, and we look back this past week in our community, in our homes and our government buildings. Even in the church, we haven't seen anything like that around our place. Have, as the wise men of the Old Testament once said, there is nothing new under the sun. All of those things have been a part of our week in some way, shape or form. But there's nothing new under the sun, nor is there a new cure. The same cure for all of those things is still the same. What the world has always needed on what the world needs now is love, love, not intimate love, not family. Love, not friend love Paul's writing here about what's known as a gap. A love got they Love is a love of of self denial. It means that you choose to give value to other people, and you keep loving people even when they reject your love. Now that does not sound easy. So is there any help for that? Well, yes, there is help. The two don't list. It helps, and the two don't list tells us that a GAAP a love is not jealous. It's not jealous. What does that mean? Well, it means that we are resentful. We aren't mad. We are angry when something good happens to somebody else but that that's what love is. It's not resentful or angry or mad are upset or snarky when something good happens to somebody else. Love is is not snarky when somebody gets a good grade, love is not snarky. When somebody gets a promotion, Love is is not snarky. When somebody gets a new car, a new house or a new phone or a new video game or a new pair of shoes or a new see thru mask. Love Is is not resentful. It's not angry. It's not mad. It's not snarky when there's a better person, when there's a better parent, when there's a better worker, when there's a better athlete or a better musician, when there's a better business owner when there's a better preacher. But here's the thing about a God of love, a God. I love this love that reflects the pure and perfect love of God. Ah, got they love keeps loving. It's not resentful. It's not angry. It's not mad. It's not snarky, even if the other person is not better. If the other person is lazy or apathetic or inferior and they still get the grade and they still get the promotion and they still get the car and they still get the nice new see thru mask, a GAAP A love doesn't lose its mind. Why the very nature of a GAAP? A love is one where a believer keeps looking to the cross, and when they look to the cross they remember. Oh yeah, I have already in Christ received the highest grade best promotion, the greatest transportation through even the temporary mask of death, and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever. By grace. I have been saved. So that's what a cop a love does. It keeps looking back to the pure and perfect love of God. It's not resentful. It's not angry. It's not. Mad is not snarky when good things happen to other people. Somebody once said that we should read first Corinthians 13 and put Jesus's name into it. So let's just try it for a moment. Jesus is not jealous. So if we're going to claim to follow Jesus, then we need to strive to be like him. So was next on our to don't list 1st 4 Love does not brag. Love is is not parading itself all the time and bragging about all the different things that it's doing. I saw a real helpful story to help our minds get wrapped around this. There was this turtle and the turtle wanted to go to Florida for the winter, but he knew he couldn't walk that far, so he got a couple of decent helping, and what the geese did was there was this long rope, and they each took an end of the rope and in the turtle clamped his big vice like mouth over the rope in the middle. And then they took off, holding on their ends of the rope. They started flying to Florida. They started flying this turtle to Florida. Somewhere along the way, the turtle hurt someone down on the ground. Say, Look at that! That's amazing. What a what a cool idea. I wonder who came up with that and the turtle said I did. Yeah, it's OK. You'll get it after lunch. See, he was so set, couldn't wait to brag and beat on his shell a little bit about this great idea that he opened his mouth. And that was the wrong thing to do. If you're bragging, you're not loving. Jesus does not Bragg. So if we're going to claim to follow Jesus than we need to strive to be like him was next on our list. First, for love is not arrogant. Love is not not puffed up or sinfully proud. When I look at the people in my home church that had the greatest impact on my life as a boy, a teenager, most of them were humble senior adults. They were people that never thought they were the most important people in the church or that they were pillars of the church, that they were founding mothers, our founding fathers of the church. They were just people that loved God and loved the Bip and loved and served other people. They were Eric. They were humble servants of the Lord. We're living in a time of great Arians. There's nothing new under the sun. There's always been great arrogance, but But this is when we live now, and we live in this time of great arrogance. When when one physician or one politician or one preacher or one parent gets on social media says they are right, and then another physician and another politician in another preacher, another parent. They get on social media and say they are right, and then everybody gravitates and moves toward whichever person matches up with their opinion and what they want to hear. The Bible has a picture of that Paul and writing to Timothy. You should be careful because people will have itching ears and they'll want their ears scratch. They want their ears tickled with something so that they will be more comfortable in their sin. Love is not a good like that. We live in a time of arrogance where someone, one person will be criticized for kneeling. Another person will be criticized for standing. Another person will be criticized for sitting down another personal, be criticized for for lying down. So maybe we should just float and nobody will criticize us. That's not true. Someone on the right or someone on the left is looking for a reason to criticize. So floating won't work either. This is the time we live in a time where individual freedom has become the ultimate moral and parrot. This is what Jesus, said Luke, 9 23 If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself. Take up his cross daily and follow me. You cannot deny yourself and make individual human freedom your highest moral imperative. Or, put another way. You can't follow Jesus and chase after your human moral freedom as your highest imperative. The math will never work. Look, that doesn't mean freedoms. Bad freedoms, great freedoms, Fantastic. The Bible was full of freedom, full of freedom in Christ. That's what it means to be free to be free in Christ, but the call of Jesus is one of self denying. If you think that your individual human freedom is the highest moral imperative, then I heard someone say this week, Don't have kids. Don't adopt a child and stay away from your grandchildren Because Children and caring for Children by the very nature of what that means is an act of self denial and act of sacrifice, whether it's feedings in the middle of the night or paying tuition in the middle of the summer. Sacrifice, self denial. This is the path to freedom throughout the Scripture and through the message of the cross. Those that have been set free five by Jesus are truly free. And if you haven't been set free by Jesus, you can fight for your rights all you want. You can fight for your political freedom. You can fight for your religious freedom. You can fight for whatever freedom you won't. But you will never be free until you've been rescued by Jesus and then you are free and no one, no king, no queen, no president, no law. No person can ever take away your freedom. That's what it means to be in Christ. Love is not Eric. Love is not sinfully proud. Love is not obnoxiously demanding. Even in the area of freedom. Jesus is not arrogant. So if if we're going to say and claim that we follow Jesus than will need to strive to be like, you know, was next on our to don't list 1st 5 love does not act unbecoming Lee. Love is not rude. Now, let me just stop here for a second, okay? And all of these things were looking at We're not talking about perfection, okay? Because none of us are perfect. We're all going to have our moments of jealousy and bragging and arrogance and rudeness is just going to happen. But they should just be moments and they shouldn't be all the time. And when they happen, we should be quicker as believers to repent. We should be quicker to ask forgiveness. We should be quicker not to repeat those things, but but love is not really good. Love has good manners. Love is Curtis. For years I have told people at the church is that we have served that I'm really not in this huge need of being respected, but I do like a little courtesy, I think courtesies. It's something that God's people should do, whether you're on social media are sitting in a business meeting at work or a business meeting at church. Whether you're talking about opinions about a pandemic, no matter where we are, what we're doing. If there's any body in the world who should not be rude, it's the people who have been rescued from hell. God's people should be courteous. God's people should be kind being transferred from the Kingdom of darkness out of there and into the kingdom of light. That should impact our manners. That should impact how we speak and talk and act and post and think story of a little boy who got a parent for his birthday. And this parrot was rude, rude, mean, critical foul mouth and never stop talking just nonstop. Little boy tried everything it could to try to get the parent change. He was nice to the parrot. Talk kindly to the parrot, played peppy music for the parents. Hey, went the other extreme, he yelled the parrot for being rude. He would take this food away for a little bit to try to threaten him, but nothing worked. No matter what he did. The pair. It was just constantly, just so rude. And so finally one day, the laborious, so frustrated he just grabbed the period. For some reason, he stuck him in the freezer of all places, and he could still hear that parents snarking from inside the freezer own and on and on and on at home. And then after a few moments, there was a sound who was required. Nothing was happening. The boy got nervous, so he opened up the freezer and the parrot just calmly walked out, walked on the boy's arm. And this is what the period said. I'm sorry that I might have offended you with my language and my actions and ask for your forgiveness. I will endeavour to correct my behavior boy sake. He didn't even know what to think. You know what to say. You know what to do. Before he could do anything, the parent continued and said, May I ask what the chicken did? As a wise sage once said, Don't put off eating chocolate. If you could do it today, listen, don't put off being courteous. If you could do it today, and you can do it today. You can. Jesus is not rude. So if we're going to claim to follow Jesus than we need to strive to be like you next on our to don't list 1st 5 Love does not seek its own, especially in times of pandemic, especially in times of political uproar, especially in times of educational difficulties. Love is not selfish. It's not selfish, selfish person is determined to get their own way, no matter the impact on the people around. Imagine two players from your favorite team and they go up to the coach after practice and they say, Coach, we want to get off the bench. We want to be on the starting team. What do we have to do? What do we have to do? Coach and your coach pulls the whistle out of his mouth and and he looks at those players and he says, So you want to be first? You won't be great. Well, if so, then you're going tohave to be you must be a humble servant to other people. I think that's what the players would be waiting to hear. Well, that's what Jesus said. And then Jesus went on to say this Matthew, 2028. Justus, the son of man, did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom. For many, the call of a believer's life is to serve, not to seek. It's own not to be selfish, not to be self centered, but to serve. That's the pattern that Jesus has set for us. I saw where Elizabeth Elliot was speaking once and in the audience down on the front. Worse, um, Children, some young Children. And she was teaching about what the Bible says about sacrifice and self denial and cheap tried Teoh use some words and some word pictures that would help those kids on the front toe understand as well. Well, sometime after that, she received a note in the mail, and it was from one of those little boys that have been sitting down front. He was six years old, and this is what his note said. I'm learning to lay down my life for my little sister. She has to take a nap in the afternoon. I don't have to take a nap, but she can't go to sleep unless I come and lay down beside her. Love knows when to taken out. Love does not seek its own. Jesus is not selfish. So if we're going to claim to follow him, then we need to strive to be like to be like Jesus. What's next on our to don't list 1st 5 Love is not provoked. Love is not easily offended. Love is not easily angered. Love is not touchy or sensitive or easily irritated. That's that's not what love is get. None of us are perfect. We realized that, but generally speaking are re known as the people that seem to always have our finger on the trigger of snapping at others or freaking out about what's going on. Are we easily irritated? Sometimes we're dangerously tempted to say things like this. Well, I mean, look, that's just how I am, you know, once, once I get out, I just takes me a minute. Once I get out of my system, everything's fine. You know, somebody says that's also the philosophy of a bomb, and it leaves nothing but destruction. We need to be careful about defending heart temper, defending being easily offended, touchy, sensitive or anything in that genre C. S. Lewis once said that that were quick to excuse are bad temper. We are, we'll say, Oh, I'm sorry. I'm such in a bad mood today. I just had anything to eat. Hand him a coffee. I didn't get a good night of sleep, or I'm just so stressed out about what's happening with my kids or my spouse from my parents or my health. Yeah, sorry, I have a bad temper, but C S Lewis says. On the other hand, when it comes, start good temper when we're in a good mood will own that. We'll say, Oh yeah, this is how I usually am. I'm I'm usually a good, kind, gracious person This is what Jesus said Luke, 6 45 talking about what we do with our mouths and really we could expand it to say what we do with our actions, Jesus said. His mouth speaks from that which fills his heart. If we're easily offended, if we're easily irritated, if we're easily angered, if we're touchy and sensitive, those are things coming from our hearts, not our stomachs, not our stress, not our attitude, but our hearts. That's what's filling our hearts. That's what Jesus says. So we have to watch our heart. Jesus is not easily provoked. Jesus is not easily irritated. Easily anger. So if we're going to claim to follow Jesus, then we need to strive to be like him. What's next on our list? 1st 5 Love does not take into account a wrong suffered. Let's just stop sermon right here. I mean, we don't really need all this stuff, right? Pick two out of the list and just do our best, right? I kind of don't work like that way. Need to hang out here. Love by its nature does not keep a record of wrongs. Love does not hold a grudge. Got ta love has a really, really bad memory, a bad memory. There's two sides of this coin here. Love is quick to confess sin Or at least let's say quicker look. Love confesses, love seeks forgiveness and the other side of the coin Love for gifts. See, love is quicker to seek forgiveness and love is is quicker to forgive. That's what love does. What happens if we're not like that? What happens if we're slow to forgive or what? What happens if we refuse to forgive well, if you have become an unforgiving person or if you are being unforgiving now, Paul Trip says, there's some benefits to unforgiveness now. They're dark benefits, he calls them. But but their benefits. When? When you are holding something over someone's head, when you're holding a dent over their head, then there's some dark benefits. And he describes him like this. It's the debt of power. You're holding something over somebody. You just won't let it go. There's also the debt of identity. Way become self righteous. We become convinced that we really are better than that other person, even apart from the grace of God were better than other person. There's also the debt of entitlement. We begin to act like that person has toe constantly do stuff for us, but they need toe. Give us gifts. They need to perform things for us. Then there's the debt of weaponry. We use our hurt to keep hurting them back and usually will hurt other people, too. And then the last debt he describes is the debt that puts us in God's position were convinced that we're good judges. We're good judging others that we we really know I was right incidently. You want any of that? Because that stuff will rot your soul. You want to be as far away from those things as you possibly can be because love does not hold that kind of debt over other people. That's not what love does. Let me just say this. I think this might be the hardest one that we're looking at here. I mean, is this? It's tough. You know why? Because it hurts so bad. And it makes a suit angry when we've been hurt by a person that is unrepentant or uncaring about how they've hurt us, and that hurts more and it makes us more angry. Unfortunately, if we're going to claim to follow Jesus, we don't have the option of saying I don't care. I'm going to hold this debt over people's lives. We don't have that option. The gospel calls us to think different toe act different, to talk different. Why, this is what Jesus, said Matthew, 6 15 But if you do not forgive others, then your father will not forgive your transgressions. Now that doesn't mean you can earn forgiveness with God by forgiving other people. That's that's not a picture. Nor does it mean if it takes you a few weeks to forgive somebody. If you wait that long, you're going to help. That's not what it means. What it means is going back to two patterns. And if the pattern of your life is not toe, ask for forgiveness when you sin against others. If the pattern of your life is to not forgive other people when they seek forgiveness than the pattern of your life is revealing that you are setting yourself against God, I know it found strong. But let's stay with me. If if those things air the pattern, you're unwilling to seek forgiveness and you're unwilling to forgive. If that's the normal pattern for years and years and years of your life, then what you're saying is this that you are okay with ignoring the cross and you are OK with your shame. You are OK with mocking the sacrifice of Jesus, and you're okay with doing the opposite of what God has called you to do. Those things don't need to be okay with us. We don't need to be okay with that. And if we're OK with that and that's the pattern of our lives than what we're doing with our lives are were settling the answer to the question of whether we're truly saved or whether we just prayed a prayer and join the church. Love calls us to forgive. Love calls us to not keep a record of wrongs. I saw a story about a man with a happy soul, and the story goes like this every day. That man would listen to things that we're good. He'd hear somebody say something kind or gracious or encouraging. He he write it down on a piece of paper and he'd stick that piece of paper in one of his pockets. And they likewise during the day when hear somebody insult him or criticized Hammer or say something mean or awful er, or gossip or slander, malice listings. He would write those things down, and he would stick him in his other pocket, and at the end of the day he would get home and he didn't be out his pockets and he pull out those good things, those little pieces of paper with all those great things that he heard that day, and he got to sit there and relive those and enjoy those common graces that happened in his life that day. But then he reached into his other pocket and there'd be nothing there. And here's why the other pocket. I had a hole in it and so all of those pieces of paper just just disappeared. All the negative bad things, they they were gone. So the moral of this story is be a litterbug and leave pieces of bad news all over town today. No, The moral of the story is this. Watch the pockets of your heart and your mind. Watch those pockets. Jesus does not keep a record of your wrongs. In fact, Jesus died for them. Keep that in your pocket. Pull that out of your pocket. Let that be the headline of your life over and over and over again. Jesus loves. And if we claim to follow Jesus that we need to strive to be like him.