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I'm going to ask you to just relax for the next few minutes and let's just talk it over.

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Talk about something that's vitally important to you, to me, to the community in which you

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live, something that's important to the whole world.

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I think that you will agree with me that the thing that is literally strangling the very

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life of this generation is man's intolerance of his fellows.

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And down to the ages, this fault has darkened history's pages.

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This thing of hatred, of war, of misunderstanding, and today it threatens to wipe mankind off

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the face of the earth, our ignorance of others' aims, our virtues, failure to discover them,

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our refusal to tolerate them, our lack of love.

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And you'll always find where there's no love, you'll find seeds of hatred.

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And misunderstood long enough, people and nations become demons in our eyes, and we

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in theirs.

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The ugly thing looms larger and larger, and it grows and it grows as a vicious cancer

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grows in the human body.

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When you get to know a fellow, know his joys and know his cares, when you come to understand

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him and the burden that he bears, when you've learned the fight he's making and the troubles

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that are in his way, then you find that he's different than you thought him yesterday.

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You find that his faults are trivial, and there's not so much to blame in the fellow

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that you jeered at when you only knew his name.

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You're quick to see the blemish in the distant neighbor's style, and you can point to all

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of his errors and may sneer at him the while.

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And your prejudices and your hates more violent grow as you talk about the failures of the

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man you really do not know.

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But when drawn a little closer and your hands and shoulders touch, you find the traits you

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hated really don't amount to much.

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When you get to know a fellow, know his every mood and whim, you begin to find the texture

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of the splendid side of him.

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You begin to understand him, and you cease to stop and sneer, for with understanding

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always prejudices disappear.

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You begin to find his virtues and his faults, you cease to tell, for you seldom hate a fellow

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when you get to know him very well.

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When next you start in sneering and phrases turn to blame, know more about him, the one

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you censor, more than just his business and his name.

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For it's likely that acquaintance would your prejudice dispel, and you'd really come to

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like him if you knew him very well.

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But when you get to know a fellow and you understand his ways, then his faults won't

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really matter, for you'll find an awful lot to praise.

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And would that God, that the people of our nation, could get a real baptism of the love

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of God, a time of knowing each other, wouldn't it be wonderful if something could happen

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that we could know our neighbors a little better?

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You've been living in the same block with that neighbor for five years, you only know

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his name, you speak, you'll say, good morning.

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But say, what about that fence you put between the two properties?

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You really haven't wanted to know him any better than you know him now.

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You live next door to somebody in an apartment house, maybe you've lived there five years,

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six years, seven years, and then you boast about the fact that you do not know your next

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door neighbor.

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It really isn't something to boast about.

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Do you know that?

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That's one reason there's so much hate in the world today.

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Again, I remind you, there never was a generation that talked more about love and knew so little

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about what they're talking about.

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The very atmosphere is permeated with hate.

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There's tension, there's greed, there's envy, there's strife.

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You and your wife, your son John, his wife, we four no more.

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That's the way the world is living.

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We need to get back to the word of God.

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We need to get back to the principles of God's word.

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Love thy neighbor as thyself.

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That's another thing that we've taken out of today's living.

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You laugh and say that's old fashioned.

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We need it today as we've never needed it before.

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Unless we get to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, you're going to find that man is

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going to destroy himself with his own hatreds.

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That's the reason I thought it's so vitally important that we get back to this thing of

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love.

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You cannot understand real love unless you see it from the standpoint of the word of

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God.

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It is vitally important.

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It's vitally important because Paul says follow after love.

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That makes it important.

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So again today, we're going back to the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians, the masterpiece,

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the basis of all living.

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I hope you've been following me in the past several heart to heart talks and then you

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really understand what love is.

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Love suffereth long and is kind.

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Love envieth much.

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Love vaunteth not itself.

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The whole emphasis here is on the word itself.

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Love that talks of loving is not love.

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It does not boast about itself.

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Love is not puffed up.

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Oh, I like that.

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That's the sweet reasonableness of love.

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It's never greedy.

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It never vaunted itself.

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It is not puffed up.

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It's not conceited.

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Wherever you find real love, you'll find humility.

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Remember something, humility is not a weak and timid quality.

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Humility is a show of strength and security.

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See, we're living in a very strange generation.

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We're living absolutely contrary to what the Bible teaches.

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We're living absolutely contrary to the laws of God.

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And that's the reason we find ourselves in the mess that we're in today.

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Humility.

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That word too has been taken out of the human vocabulary.

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And we've gotten to the place where we feel that humility is a sign of weakness.

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It isn't.

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Humility is never a sign of weakness.

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Humility is the sign of strength and security.

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I shall never forget that Saturday night.

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And I was only a little kid holding on to Papa's hand.

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And we were going through that screen door on the main street of Concordia, Missouri.

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And Mr. Desique had a meat market.

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Papa was mayor of Concordia.

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It was a hot Saturday night.

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And the two of us were just going through the screen door when Concordia's old drunk.

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Push!

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Papa back.

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Shave him a shelf.

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And Papa stepped aside, stood holding the screen door open, and the old drunks staggered

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through the door into the meat market.

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Another man standing watching the whole procedure said, Joe Kuhlman, are you going to let him

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get by with that?

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I was still holding on to Papa's hand.

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And he just smiled and said, I can afford to let him go first.

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I can afford to let him go first.

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Humility is never a sign of weakness.

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It's never a timid quality.

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It's a show of security.

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It's a show of strength.

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I believe that the very first test of a truly great man is his humility.

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Humility is the solid foundation of all the virtues.

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Humility is to make a right estimate of one's self.

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When you can get to the place where you can afford certain things, then my friend, you're

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a secure person.

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Think about it.

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And there's no harder lesson to learn than that of humility.

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It's the rarest of all gifts and the hardest lesson that the Lord had to teach his disciples.

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And it was one of the very last lessons that he gave them before he went away.

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In Augustine, when asked the first of the Christian graces replied, humility, first, second, and third.

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And remember something, it can never be counterfeited.

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Never.

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Love is never popped out.

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Never.

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It is not conceited.

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Then continue.

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Then comes this does not behave itself unseemly.

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As I told you in our last heart to heart talk, the simple meaning of this is just this.

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Love is always polite.

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Love is never violent.

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Love is courteous.

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It's that brutal.

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It does not go around saying ugly things.

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Love does not do this kind of a thing.

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Love does not behave itself unseemly.

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Seeketh not its own.

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Perhaps this is one of the profoundest word about the self-emptying capacity of love.

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Seeketh not its own.

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Is not provoked.

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I like that.

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It's not exasperated.

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That's something I'm going to have to dwell on.

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I think I need a greater capacity for patience.

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You know, I'm in this thing with you because we are a part of humanity.

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We have our influence.

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We're just human beings.

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I have my weaknesses.

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You have your weaknesses.

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No man is perfect.

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Only one who ever walked this earth was perfect.

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And that's the reason I have no right to judge another.

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Neither have you the right to condemn someone else.

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And yet we do.

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We all have our weaknesses.

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All of us.

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Love is not provoked, not exasperated.

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Those are all the descriptions of what love does to the individual.

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And there it is.

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And each one of us has our relationship to people, to the individual.

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I do not live unto myself.

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You do not live unto yourself.

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And the word of God shows us what love is in relationship to our fellow men, our neighbors,

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members of our family.

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And through this relationship and through our love, we manifest the love of the Christ

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that we serve.

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Paul then turns and shows the relative effect of love.

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Taketh not an account of evil.

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Now to render that in a slightly different way, love does not keep a ledger in which

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to enter up wrongs to be dealt with someday later on.

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Some people never forget.

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I know somebody, and I've watched this very closely in this individual.

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It always amazes me.

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If you were to mention a person's name, that one can always remember the bad things about

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that one.

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And for the life of them, they never remember anything good about that one.

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Do you have somebody like that that you know?

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Do you?

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They're always remembering the bad things.

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There's something about their mind, their memory.

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Their memory always absorbs the evil, the bad, the wrong that the person has done.

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And yet that same person may have done a thousand wonderful things or have a score of wonderful

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characteristics, yet they never see that in that one.

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They only see the bad.

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Strange, isn't it?

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Now love never keeps an account of the bad in the life of another individual.

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That's a word of God.

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Rejoiceth not in unrighteousness.

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Now that's the other side of the first.

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If you do not keep a ledger in which you enter up things of wrong, then you rejoice not in

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unrighteousness.

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Have you seen some folk who will say, oh, have you heard?

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Have you heard?

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Isn't it?

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Oh, oh.

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And they're tickled to death that it happened because they've got something to talk about.

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When you see certain neighbors coming over to your house, you know good and well, it's

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not something good they have to say, but it's something bad that they've just heard and

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you get all set in prime for it.

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It's a good bit of gossip and it's not good gossip.

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Uh-huh.

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Rejoiceth not in unrighteousness.

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But rejoiceth with the truth.

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That's the reason of its inability to be glad in the presence of evil, but happy in the

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presence of God and truth.

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Then that wonderful little phrase, beareth all things.

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Now do not confuse it with another statement that comes later, beareth.

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The word here means that which excludes things.

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It's the idea of an umbrella that you put up and then you invite someone to a shelter

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from the beating rain.

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It's sort of the roof that you put over the head.

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Love acts as a roof over other people, shielding them from the storm as it sweeps.

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Wouldn't it be wonderful if we all began to carry an umbrella of love?

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Somebody should start a campaign of an umbrella of love.

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Putting up that umbrella of love, we invite another to come under that shelter of love

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and say, come, share my umbrella of love.

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Won't you please?

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Come on.

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When next you start insnaring and phrases turn to blame, know more of him that you censor

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than his business and his name.

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When you get to know a fellow and understand his ways, then his faults won't really matter

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and you'll find an awful lot of praise.

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Cover him with your umbrella of love.