If I speak with the tongues of men and of the angels and have not love,
I am become sounding brass
or a clanging symbol.
If I have the gift of prophecy and know all the mysteries and all knowledge,
and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains
but have not love, I'm nothing.
The gift of prophecy is marvelous. The gift of knowledge is marvelous.
Even though I'm able to do all of that.
And if I were to have the faith that could remove mountains
and have not love, look at the importance of love.
And I agree in this sense with those who are talking love, love, love these days.
Love is mighty important.
It is so important that God's Word says follow after love.
It is so important that even though one were to have all of the gifts of the Spirit
and love was not the motivating power behind the exercising of these gifts of the Spirit,
they would be nothing.
So great is the power of love and the value of love.
But sometimes I wonder if this thing that we call love, if it is real love.
Love is the Bible teaches. Once more.
If I bestow all my gifts to feed the poor,
absolute benevolence, the giving away of everything to feed the poor.
Oh, it's a wonderful thing to do.
But if I do it only to be seen or to receive the applause of men
or to make someone indebted to me, then my motive is wrong.
All the things that seem to us to be so fine, the voice of eloquence,
the gift of forth telling the will of God, the ability to peer into the mysteries
and to come to understand even the ability to exercise faith so as to remove mountains,
the activity that bestows everything in order to the feeding of the poor,
the conviction that carries me so far as to give my body to be burned,
I could be a martyr.
It's nothing. It does not avail.
Unless love is the motivation.
Think of the values of love.
Consequently, from that negative paragraph,
we draw the positive conclusion. And what is it?
That when love is the motive in every case, all of this becomes a power.
There's value there.
If love is the motive of speech, if love is the motive for the forth telling the will of God,
if love is that which investigates the mysteries in order to understand,
if love is the power in faith, if love lies behind the act of benevolence,
if love carries me to the martyr's death, then these things are of supreme value.
But if love is not the motive, it means absolutely nothing.
Without it, there's no excitement, there's no value at all.
And sometimes I wonder if maybe that which we call love today is nothing more or less than noise,
nothing more than excitement.
Nothing more than excitement. Empty.
Sort of like the cotton candy we used to get in the old fashioned fairs, you know.
It means nothing. Nothing at all.
Now go on to the 14th chapter, linking that with what Paul said at the close of the 12th chapter.
Now in the 14th chapter we see what love does and how all these things become of value,
of real energy, a real force in proportion as there is in love.
We come to the virtues of love.
Or we can change the word and say Paul describes the fruitfulness of love.
For where there is real love, there will always be fruitfulness.
And this is the central passage and how wonderful it is.
Notice that Paul here gives us a double seven.
There are 14 things he says here.
Continue with me.
In the first seven we have a description of the effect of love upon the individual under the mastery of love.
In the second seven the value of love is seen in its relationships.
First personal, then relative.
And let us bear in mind as we glance over the ground that the individual is all we see.
And love is acting in the individual in relation to others.
And when we look at the relative declarations we see the outcome of love mastered personality.
You may think that you are a love mastered personality.
Sometimes I think it's a mighty good thing to just stand before a mirror.
And just look at yourself, the real you, the real person.
Sometimes I think it's a mighty good thing to take inventory of oneself and say why am I doing this?
What's my motivation?
What's the purpose?
Why did I give that gift?
Did I expect something in return?
Why did I act thus and so?
Did I want that one to feel obligated to me?
We're living in a day when few people ever really give of themselves.
Few people ever really give of themselves or give a gift or make any kind of contribution whatsoever to society without expecting something in return.
You see, we as nations often give because it's sort of a peace offering.
Oh, you know, an awful lot is being said about this good neighbor policy and our brotherly love.
I think sometimes if our good neighbor policy and our brotherly love was analyzed,
you'll find there's not much good neighborly love there and not real brotherly love.
We're expecting something in return and sometimes we expect more in return than that which we've given.
That's not love at all.
I'm always so amazed, you know, at people when they want to give something to the Lord.
Oh, and they make a gift.
And if they haven't received approbation within the next 24 hours, their feelings are hurt.
They feel the gift was not appreciated.
When you really give with love in your heart, you'll never expect something in return.
Never. You give it with no strings attached whatsoever.
You give it with no feeling of wanting approbation whatsoever.
Your feelings will never be hurt.
Now, if you gave something, whether it's to your neighbor, to your brother, a member of your family, or unto the Lord,
and if after having made that gift, your feelings were hurt because you did not receive in return that which you expected,
then you really didn't give out of love.
It's so simple. It's like that. It's exactly like that.
So I say to you, it's a good thing to just check up on yourself right now.
Look yourself directly in the face.
Start analyzing the real you. That's something that few people want to do.
What does love do in the individual?
In every case, we see that the individual who is love-mastered, and that action is love-mastered toward other people.
Love suffereth long and is kind.
Now, don't hurry over that, whatever you do. Don't hurry over that one.
Oh, you would like to say, keep on reading. Oh, no.
Love suffereth long and is kind.
Now, that's the distinguishing quality of love.
Not merely that it suffereth long, but is kind.
We know very little about real kindness in the world today.
We talk about love, but you don't hear much about kindness these days.
That's out of the human vocabulary.
Somebody took it out of the vocabulary a long, long time ago.
That word kindness is outmoded. Being kind.
Love never says, the third time pays for all, which means that one has borne this thing once, twice, and the third time is enough. Oh, no.
Love does not end with the third.
You remember, once Peter thought that he had reached a great height,
when he overreached that popular statement when he said, how often shall I forgive my brother?
Until seven times? Peter had a theology all of his own.
A lot of people had their own theology. That's the funny thing about this generation.
It's amazing how people make up their own theology today.
Instead of doing the word of God, the real source of knowledge, perfect theology.
Everybody has his own theology, and some of our theology today is pretty bad, let me tell you.
But it goes right back to Peter. He made up his own theology.
He said, I'll tell you right now, this is what my theology includes.
Seven times is enough for anyone to forgive his brother.
And so I'll forgive him seven times.
But beyond that, I'm just going to cut him to pieces.
I'm going to give him exactly what he deserves.
Wham! And so he said, now how about it?
How often shall I forgive my brother?
He should have stopped right there, but he didn't.
Until seven times? He answered his own question, you know.
That's what we do today. We ask a question, then we answer our own question.
The Lord laughed at him, but he was a tender laughter.
And he looked at Peter and he said, I do not say seven times, but 490 at least.
Seven times seven.
You forgave your brother once, or maybe you haven't forgiven him at all.
Maybe your love is the kind that doesn't forgive at all.
You talk about love, but it doesn't include forgiveness.
And yet the word of God, the highest authority in heaven and earth said,
Love suffereth long and is kind.
There's a wonderful illustration in what Jacob said about one of his sons.
Joseph is a fruitful man.
Joseph is a fruitful bough. A fruitful bough by a fountain.
His branches run over the wall.
I want my branches to run over the wall.