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If I speak with the tongues of men and of the angels and have not love,

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I am become sounding brass

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or a clanging symbol.

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If I have the gift of prophecy and know all the mysteries and all knowledge,

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and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains

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but have not love, I'm nothing.

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The gift of prophecy is marvelous. The gift of knowledge is marvelous.

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Even though I'm able to do all of that.

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And if I were to have the faith that could remove mountains

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and have not love, look at the importance of love.

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And I agree in this sense with those who are talking love, love, love these days.

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Love is mighty important.

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It is so important that God's Word says follow after love.

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It is so important that even though one were to have all of the gifts of the Spirit

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and love was not the motivating power behind the exercising of these gifts of the Spirit,

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they would be nothing.

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So great is the power of love and the value of love.

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But sometimes I wonder if this thing that we call love, if it is real love.

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Love is the Bible teaches. Once more.

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If I bestow all my gifts to feed the poor,

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absolute benevolence, the giving away of everything to feed the poor.

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Oh, it's a wonderful thing to do.

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But if I do it only to be seen or to receive the applause of men

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or to make someone indebted to me, then my motive is wrong.

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All the things that seem to us to be so fine, the voice of eloquence,

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the gift of forth telling the will of God, the ability to peer into the mysteries

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and to come to understand even the ability to exercise faith so as to remove mountains,

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the activity that bestows everything in order to the feeding of the poor,

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the conviction that carries me so far as to give my body to be burned,

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I could be a martyr.

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It's nothing. It does not avail.

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Unless love is the motivation.

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Think of the values of love.

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Consequently, from that negative paragraph,

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we draw the positive conclusion. And what is it?

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That when love is the motive in every case, all of this becomes a power.

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There's value there.

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If love is the motive of speech, if love is the motive for the forth telling the will of God,

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if love is that which investigates the mysteries in order to understand,

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if love is the power in faith, if love lies behind the act of benevolence,

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if love carries me to the martyr's death, then these things are of supreme value.

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But if love is not the motive, it means absolutely nothing.

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Without it, there's no excitement, there's no value at all.

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And sometimes I wonder if maybe that which we call love today is nothing more or less than noise,

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nothing more than excitement.

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Nothing more than excitement. Empty.

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Sort of like the cotton candy we used to get in the old fashioned fairs, you know.

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It means nothing. Nothing at all.

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Now go on to the 14th chapter, linking that with what Paul said at the close of the 12th chapter.

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Now in the 14th chapter we see what love does and how all these things become of value,

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of real energy, a real force in proportion as there is in love.

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We come to the virtues of love.

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Or we can change the word and say Paul describes the fruitfulness of love.

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For where there is real love, there will always be fruitfulness.

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And this is the central passage and how wonderful it is.

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Notice that Paul here gives us a double seven.

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There are 14 things he says here.

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Continue with me.

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In the first seven we have a description of the effect of love upon the individual under the mastery of love.

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In the second seven the value of love is seen in its relationships.

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First personal, then relative.

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And let us bear in mind as we glance over the ground that the individual is all we see.

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And love is acting in the individual in relation to others.

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And when we look at the relative declarations we see the outcome of love mastered personality.

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You may think that you are a love mastered personality.

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Sometimes I think it's a mighty good thing to just stand before a mirror.

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And just look at yourself, the real you, the real person.

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Sometimes I think it's a mighty good thing to take inventory of oneself and say why am I doing this?

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What's my motivation?

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What's the purpose?

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Why did I give that gift?

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Did I expect something in return?

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Why did I act thus and so?

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Did I want that one to feel obligated to me?

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We're living in a day when few people ever really give of themselves.

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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.

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You see, we as nations often give because it's sort of a peace offering.

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Oh, you know, an awful lot is being said about this good neighbor policy and our brotherly love.

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I think sometimes if our good neighbor policy and our brotherly love was analyzed,

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you'll find there's not much good neighborly love there and not real brotherly love.

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We're expecting something in return and sometimes we expect more in return than that which we've given.

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That's not love at all.

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I'm always so amazed, you know, at people when they want to give something to the Lord.

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Oh, and they make a gift.

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And if they haven't received approbation within the next 24 hours, their feelings are hurt.

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They feel the gift was not appreciated.

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When you really give with love in your heart, you'll never expect something in return.

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Never. You give it with no strings attached whatsoever.

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You give it with no feeling of wanting approbation whatsoever.

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Your feelings will never be hurt.

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Now, if you gave something, whether it's to your neighbor, to your brother, a member of your family, or unto the Lord,

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and if after having made that gift, your feelings were hurt because you did not receive in return that which you expected,

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then you really didn't give out of love.

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It's so simple. It's like that. It's exactly like that.

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So I say to you, it's a good thing to just check up on yourself right now.

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Look yourself directly in the face.

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Start analyzing the real you. That's something that few people want to do.

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What does love do in the individual?

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In every case, we see that the individual who is love-mastered, and that action is love-mastered toward other people.

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Love suffereth long and is kind.

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Now, don't hurry over that, whatever you do. Don't hurry over that one.

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Oh, you would like to say, keep on reading. Oh, no.

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Love suffereth long and is kind.

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Now, that's the distinguishing quality of love.

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Not merely that it suffereth long, but is kind.

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We know very little about real kindness in the world today.

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We talk about love, but you don't hear much about kindness these days.

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That's out of the human vocabulary.

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Somebody took it out of the vocabulary a long, long time ago.

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That word kindness is outmoded. Being kind.

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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.

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Love does not end with the third.

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You remember, once Peter thought that he had reached a great height,

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when he overreached that popular statement when he said, how often shall I forgive my brother?

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Until seven times? Peter had a theology all of his own.

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A lot of people had their own theology. That's the funny thing about this generation.

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It's amazing how people make up their own theology today.

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Instead of doing the word of God, the real source of knowledge, perfect theology.

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Everybody has his own theology, and some of our theology today is pretty bad, let me tell you.

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But it goes right back to Peter. He made up his own theology.

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He said, I'll tell you right now, this is what my theology includes.

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Seven times is enough for anyone to forgive his brother.

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And so I'll forgive him seven times.

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But beyond that, I'm just going to cut him to pieces.

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I'm going to give him exactly what he deserves.

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Wham! And so he said, now how about it?

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How often shall I forgive my brother?

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He should have stopped right there, but he didn't.

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Until seven times? He answered his own question, you know.

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That's what we do today. We ask a question, then we answer our own question.

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The Lord laughed at him, but he was a tender laughter.

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And he looked at Peter and he said, I do not say seven times, but 490 at least.

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Seven times seven.

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You forgave your brother once, or maybe you haven't forgiven him at all.

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Maybe your love is the kind that doesn't forgive at all.

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You talk about love, but it doesn't include forgiveness.

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And yet the word of God, the highest authority in heaven and earth said,

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Love suffereth long and is kind.

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There's a wonderful illustration in what Jacob said about one of his sons.

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Joseph is a fruitful man.

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Joseph is a fruitful bough. A fruitful bough by a fountain.

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His branches run over the wall.

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I want my branches to run over the wall.