Bearing, Believing, Hoping & Enduring - Wait…Did You Really Mean ALL THINGS?
Good morning, church!
So nothing really happened this past week, right? No,
there’s no pressure on this message today, right?
Thankfully, I actually don’t feel pressure, because I know a
few things:
I know that these remain: Faith, Hope, and Love…but the
greatest of these is LOVE.
And we’ve been talking about Love this fall, and no matter
what you personally feel about elections, or the state of our country, or our
world…the more we can understand, respond to, and emulate God’s love for us,
the more we can be faithful, and hopeful. I believe that with my whole heart.
And I know a couple other things…
There is one true king, and that is Christ Jesus our Lord.
It says in Matthew 28:18 – And Jesus came and said to them,
"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”
Not an earthly king or ruler or government, but Jesus.
In Philippians, Paul writes – Therefore God has highly
exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at
the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the
earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God
the Father.
Some translations say every knee WILL bow to Jesus. And I
have great hope in that.
Our God reigns.
Christ wins the day.
And Revelation 19:16 says, “On his robe and on his thigh
he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.”
We are assured that in the end, He is King, He is Lord!
I also know that we are called to love not just the people
we agree with, but EVERYONE. That’s what Jesus told us in Matthew 5:45:
“But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those
who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For
he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just
and on the unjust.”
And similarly, in Luke 6:35-36:
“But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting
nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the
Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as
your Father is merciful.”
We are called to LOVE, just to LOVE. God makes his sun rise
on the evil and the good.
My prayer for me, for you, for this church, is that we will
LOVE, and we will let God worry about carrying out His justice.
So, I think it is well-timed that we are going to dive into
the subject of love today and that we have been focused on that over the last
several weeks.
What we are focusing on today is the seventh verse in the
famous love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13:7:
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all
things, endures all things.
Before we dive in a bit further, will you pray with me:
Dear God, Thank you that you are in
control. Thank you that you are King and you are Lord. As we look at your Word
this morning, we pray that you will speak to us about love. We pray that you
will teach us how to love and that you will strengthen us to love each other as
you first loved us. We love you, and we praise you. Amen.
Love Bears, Believes, Hopes, and Endures
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all
things, and endures all things.
Boy, I hope so, because this thing needs a lot of bearing,
believing, hoping, and very certainly enduring.
My poor wife Molly has had to do a lot of that. It’s really
amazing that she had the wherewithal to ever start dating me in the first place
back in our college years. I remember a summer where I was absolutely
insufferable; I was unbearable. She had to endure A LOT to be my friend.
We were really just good friends at the time, but I was a
pain to be around. I had stayed in Seattle for the summer, I was largely on my
own, I think several of my roommates were traveling or went home. I was
expecting to get this great internship, but it kept delaying and delaying, and
I was in this terrible rut. I was in a dark place where all I could think or
talk about was “woe is me.” I was pretty much sitting in the muck and mire and
just wallowing.
It’s hard to be a friend to someone so lacking in anything
positive. You can only listen to so much negativity for so long. And my
negativity certainly wore on Molly and other people who were around that
summer. But Molly bore with me. She believed in me, hoping I’d snap out of it
and be the good friend she knew I could be, and she made sure that our
relationship endured. She persevered.
Part of that perseverance was outright saying something
like, “I care for you, I want to be your friend, but you need to get your
act together.”
When people talk about saying the truth in love, Molly told
me the truth in love, and it did finally snap me out of it. As time went on, we
became closer and closer, and she saw my huge flaws, but she endured, believed,
hoped, and persevered with me. And she has to do that every day because I am
still a bit (no…monumentally) unbearable.
As much as Molly loves me in that selfless, enduring way,
thank goodness God loves me seventy times seven that way. Because as big of a
stinker as I am to her, whoa, I hurt God so much more.
God Is Love
What is love? GOD IS LOVE. Love isn’t just a quality of God;
it’s His very nature.
Let’s read 1 John 4:7-8. I used to sing this scripture in
Sunday School back in the day:
(Singing)…Beloved, let us love one another (love one
another)…Did anyone out there sing that too?
Okay, no one needs to hear my fabulous singing…
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God,
and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love
does not know God, because God is love.”
God…is…LOVE. In an eternal, always, forever way, God gives
of himself for our good. And God is good, all the time. He is the standard of
goodness, and with that goodness, He shows us His unfailing love. Jesus tells
us that through Him, God loved us before the foundation of the world.
If you think about the Trinity, that true nature of love is
fully evident. The way that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Spirit are intertwined in love demonstrates THAT true nature of God, that God
is LOVE.
And that is not a love that has to be earned; how could we
earn His love? God is all good; we are not. As it says in Luke 18, “No one
is good except God alone.” So despite that fact—we are NOT good—we
are assured that God chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, like a
parent who chooses to love their child before they’re even born.
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through
faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.”
Why is God able to give us the free gift of grace? Because
He is LOVE.
Reading further in 1 John 4:9-10:
“In this, the love of God was made manifest among us,
that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.
In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his
Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
God so loved us that He sent His one and only Son. In His
love for us—not because of any love we had for Him—He sent His Son to be the
propitiation for our sins.
Cool word, right? Propitiation. I am a big word nerd,
and OOO I just love PROPITIATION so much!
Webster’s dictionary defines that as: the act of gaining
or regaining the favor or goodwill of someone or something: the act of
propitiating: appeasement.
Think about this—propitiation is supposed to be our
act of regaining God’s favor… but God didn’t do it that way. He sent His Son as
the propitiation. It is His act, not our act, of gaining His
favor.
Why?
Because we are NOT good, because we can’t gain His favor on
our own accord. We gain His favor, we gain LIFE, because of HIS accord.
Because HE...IS…LOVE.
As we are told through the Apostle Paul in Romans 5:8, and
full disclosure, I just LOVE this scripture, if you have heard other messages I
have given, I recite this one a lot…
“But God shows his love for us in that while we were
still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Who does that?
God does that, because GOD…IS…LOVE.
If God is Love, then I like looking at what Paul wrote in 1
Corinthians 13 with the word Love replaced by God.
God…bears all things.
God…believes all things.
God…hopes all things.
God…endures all things.
I don’t know about you, but somehow that elevates these
verses for me. Sometimes, I can read 1 Corinthians 13 and think, “Oh, that’s
nice; those are beautiful words about love.” Love is patient; Love is kind.
But by reading these verses with the understanding that they reflect the very
nature of God, it deepens the gravity of what’s being conveyed.
If we know that God bears all things, what does that
assure us of?
The Greek word for bears—stegei—also means
roof, or covers, or protects. God covers or protects us from things that are
profoundly NOT good because God, Love, is good. Proverbs 10:12 says that love
covers all sins, or offenses, or wrongs, or evil deeds. Our sins, our evil
deeds, our lack of goodness is covered by God.
We are protected. How? Through Christ’s sacrificial gift on
the cross. Why? Because of His great love for us!
God believes all things…God believes in US
God believes in us things that don’t have a lot to believe
in. God has faith in us when we are utterly unfaithful. At the cross, Jesus
prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Can you imagine that? The people had no faith in Jesus to
the point that they wanted to kill Him. “Crucify him, crucify him, give us
the murderer Barabbas, and put Jesus to death.” Could there be less faith
in Jesus than that?
But Christ believed in them. Despite complete betrayal, He
interceded for us in His agony on the cross: “Father, forgive them.”
Why does He believe in us? Because of His great love for us!
God hopes all things…God hopes in US
The Greek word elpis (for hope) almost always refers
to a good expectation. In a Christian sense, it represents a joyful and
confident expectation of eternal salvation.
God hopes in us. He is joyful and expectant of being with us
eternally. The Westminster Shorter Catechism says that our chief end is to
glorify God and enjoy Him forever. I believe God hopes in us, joyfully
confident that we will enjoy Him forever, and He will enjoy us forever.
Romans 8:20-21 says:
“For the creation was subjected to futility, not
willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation
itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom
of the glory of the children of God.”
Who else but God can be the one hoping in this verse? Who
else could subject HIS creation? No one else.
So who hopes in HIS creation? Who has hope in you? God.
Why does He hope in us, expect good in us, and feel joy at
the thought of being with us eternally? Because of His great love for us!
God endures all things…God endures us, God awaits us, God
perseveres with us
Boy, does He ever.
Throughout Scripture—from Genesis to Revelation—a continuous
theme is how God perseveres to know us, to love us, to redeem us. We walk away
from Him time after time, yet He makes a covenant with us to restore our
relationship with Him.
All of humanity was wicked, evil continually, but Noah found
favor in the eyes of the Lord, and you know the story—God flooded the Earth but
spared Noah and made a covenant with him to persevere with humankind.
He made a covenant with Abraham that all peoples on earth
would be blessed through him. And He made that covenant unconditionally.
He made a covenant with Moses so that His people could have
a relationship with God.
He made a covenant with David that, through David’s
descendants, He would give the Messiah, whose kingdom would reign forever where
wickedness will no longer oppress.
And finally, the New Covenant through Jesus, where through
His death, we receive forgiveness of our sins, a renewal of our hearts, and
forever communion with God.
In the midst of all those covenants where God showed His
perseverance for us, we failed Him time and time again. Rampant sin,
wickedness, and continuous disobedience to God—but time and time again, He
endured, He persevered.
Philippians 1:6 says:
“And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in
you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”
Why, after we constantly walk away, disobey, and sin against
Him, does He persevere with us?
Because of His great love for us!
If God is Love, What Are We Called to Do? Love One
Another
So, if God is love, what are we called to do? LOVE ONE
ANOTHER.
Going back to 1 John 4:7-8:
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God,
and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love
does not know God, because God is love.”
We are assured that God is love, yes, but that isn’t the end
of it, is it? There’s an interplay between God being love and us being called
to love others as He first loved us. There are over a hundred Scriptures
imploring us to be like Jesus, who is God the Son.
If we know that God is love (and we do) and that God bears
all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things, then
what are we called to do? We are called to bear all things, believe all things,
hope all things, and endure all things.
Sure, but what do you mean by all things? Don’t you
mean some things?
No.
When God’s love works through us, that love has no
conditions, just as God’s love and grace have no conditions. To emphasize that
“all things” really means all things, Paul repeats the word panta, which
means “all things,” four times. Paul didn’t need to say it four times, but he
did. He wanted us to know it’s all-inclusive, no exceptions. All means ALL.
Oooo, that’s hard…
Wait, wait, wait…maybe “all things” doesn’t apply to all
people?
No, throughout the New Testament, that word panta is
used to describe all people as well as everything else. Go back a few chapters
in that same letter Paul wrote to the Corinthians, where he said in 1
Corinthians 8:6:
“…yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are
all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are
all things and through whom we exist.”
Can there be any doubt that when Paul writes “ALL,” he means
ALL?
I don’t think so.
But that’s a real challenge, isn’t it? David preached on
this a couple of weeks ago, didn’t he? Love does not get easily angered and
doesn’t keep a list of how we have been wronged.
Wait, I’m supposed to bear, believe, hope, and endure that
co-worker who is miserable and mean and makes things difficult?
I’m supposed to bear, believe, hope, and endure that person
I disagree with politically?
Am I supposed to bear, believe, hope, and endure that person
who doesn’t even share my faith in Jesus, who may even oppress me for having
that faith?
What about a neighbor who challenges my patience?
Paul said in Romans 13:8-10:
“Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the
one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, ‘You shall
not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not
covet,’ and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: ‘You shall love
your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love
is the fulfilling of the law.”
And Jesus said there are no greater commandments than loving
the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind and loving our neighbor as
ourselves.
There is NEVER any implication that these neighbors are only
those we like or those who treat us well.
So, YES, Christ challenges US to love “all things” by
bearing, believing, hoping, and enduring with them.
So What Does That Look Like for Us?
“Love bears all things.”
That means carrying others’ burdens, not just in the ways
that are convenient or for the people we really like or those who are easy to
help. No, it’s a love that we exhibit even when we’re at our limit of patience
with someone who has wronged us.
What does it mean to truly “bear all things”? It means we’re
called to carry others in their struggles, even when it’s uncomfortable, even
when it feels inconvenient. It’s not a surface-level love; it’s a love that
digs in deep, meeting people where they are, just like Jesus met us.
When we bear with others, we’re reflecting a love that is
long-suffering. It’s choosing patience over frustration. It’s choosing
compassion over judgment. Think of this…Jesus washed the feet of His
disciples—all of them—including Judas, knowing full well Judas would betray
Him. That’s the depth of love we’re called to.
“Love believes all things.”
Not in a naive or unrealistic way, but in a way that
resembles how God looks at them, as His child. God looks at each of us and
believes in us as a parent believes in their child. It’s not a belief that
says, “Oh…my child would never do that.” Instead, it’s a belief in our
redeemability despite the fact that we sin, fall short, and disappoint our
Father daily.
“Love believes all things” is not a love with some blind
optimism. No, it has depth, seeing people as God sees them. It’s a belief that
stretches beyond flaws, beyond failures, knowing we all fall short of God’s
glory. It’s not about pretending someone can’t do wrong but about seeing their
potential to find the joy of the Lord. We live this out by choosing to look at
others, trusting that God is still doing a good work in them until He has
finished it. It’s a love that believes beyond what we can see.
“Love hopes all things.”
This is a love that sees beyond what’s broken in a person to
what God can make whole. It’s a love that never gives up on others because it’s
rooted in the hope we have in Christ—a hope that’s stronger than any failure,
mistake, or wound. When we love with hope, we’re seeing people through the lens
of God’s promises, not their shortcomings. Revelation tells us:
“And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am
making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are
trustworthy and true.’” (Revelation 21:5)
Do you hope for that? Do you hope that the person who has
bitterly wronged you is something God will make new? Do you hope that the
person who has completely turned their back on Christ and done terribly immoral
things will ultimately kneel at the feet of Jesus and declare He is Lord?
It’s really hard, but make no mistake, that’s the hope we
are called to.
“Love endures all things.”
Endurance is what holds everything else together. Love isn’t
love if it’s only there for the easy stuff, right? Persevering, enduring love
shows up day in and day out. It’s constant; it goes the distance. Isn’t that
how God loves us? We’re assured of this in Philippians:
“…being confident of this very thing, that He who has
begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.”
(Philippians 1:6)
What if we loved in that way? What if we loved all things by
having confidence that God will complete His good work in them? By sticking
with each other even when love is really hard, even when we’re tempted to let
go?
Enduring love, rooted in Christ, doesn’t just accept the
best parts of people; it stays close when they’re at their worst, just as
Christ does with us.
The Greatest of These Is Love
So these remain: Faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of
these is love.
Why is that? I’ve been thinking about it a lot because I
hear a fair bit of criticism about Christians emphasizing love too much. I
understand that—there can be a tendency to turn the command to love our
neighbor as God loves us into something where we tolerate and give a pass to
all manner of sin. That’s not what we should be doing.
But still—THE GREATEST OF THESE IS LOVE!
So, how do we do this?
We speak the truth in love. We start with the default
position of truly loving and caring for the person, then engaging with them,
rooted in a love that wants them to experience the true joy of being in Christ.
And what does being in Christ look like? Well…it looks like
loving Him with all our heart, soul, and mind, and loving others as ourselves.
Doesn’t that make sense?
I’ve been thinking about this over the last several days.
Our human, fallen nature pulls us toward total selfishness and self-reliance,
doesn’t it? If you think about it, probably the main reason people don’t want
to give their life to Christ is that they don’t want to be told what they can
and can’t do.
Of course, living under a list of rules is not what being in
Christ is about, but when we break it all down, every one of us has this sinful
nature of wanting to be in control of ourselves, to do as we see fit, to be out
for ourselves. We do that with the false notion that being in control—living in
a way that prioritizes me over anything else—will lead to happiness.
It actually never leads to happiness; that way of living
always leads to despair.
When have I experienced the most joy? It has always
been in the times when I have truly put my faith, hope, and love in our Risen
Savior. It’s been in the times I cared for and loved others more than myself.
When I look at my life and the most joyful times, every single one revolves
around others, not myself.
The greatest of these IS love, because it binds all the
other spiritual traits together.
You see, God is love, and because of His great love for us,
He wants us to love. He wants us to love because true love—love rooted in
Him—brings joy beyond measure. He doesn’t need or want us to put our faith and
hope in Him just to follow a list of things to do and things to avoid. No, He
wants us to put our faith and hope in Him because true joy is found in Him.
He wants us to put our faith and hope in Him because He so
loved us that He gave His one and only Son, so that whoever puts their faith
and hope in Him will have that joy now and into eternity. He wants us to put
our faith and hope in Him because He is love.
Will you pray with me?
Dear God, thank you for being Love.
Thank you for bearing with us, believing in us, hoping in us, and enduring with
us. Lord, teach us, and enable us, to be like you. We love you with all our
heart, soul, and mind. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
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