00:00:00.000 - 00:00:29.320

Let us continue in worship by giving attention to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in the book of 1st Corinthians, the 15th chapter. I begin the reading at the verse numbered 3. "For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance

00:00:29.320 - 00:00:51.880

with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than 500 brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to

00:00:51.880 - 00:01:19.080

all the apostles, and last of all as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of

00:01:19.080 - 00:01:54.720

them, though it was not I but the grace of God which is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach, and so you believed." And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his Word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

00:01:55.360 - 00:02:22.720

I would like to think with you this morning about how to be a Christian lover. The Apostle Paul was a genius. Indeed, he was so much of a genius that I am quite convinced that even if he had not become a Christian, we would know of him and of his thought today. Such a magnificent intellect and such a

00:02:22.720 - 00:02:49.560

powerful personality would have inevitably left its mark upon the ages. Now, I've heard many studies of the life and work of Paul as you have. Paul as missionary, Paul as theologian, Paul as ambassador, Paul as author, Paul as preacher, Paul as teacher. But I would like to think with you this morning

00:02:49.560 - 00:03:19.400

about Paul as lover. Now, we have cheapened the word "love." We use it so frequently that many times the word is counterfeit. We say, for example, "I love mashed potatoes." Or we say, "I love you" to the dog. Or we say, "I'd love to bash your head in." The word has been robbed of much of its meaning, but perhaps we

00:03:19.400 - 00:03:44.320

can get at the loving nature of the Apostle if we think of what he was not and then come to what he was. First of all, notice that Paul was not a non-lover. Now, a non-lover is a person who is simply not interested in other people. It was Martin Luther King who coined the phrase, "If you care, you share." Non-lovers

00:03:44.320 - 00:04:12.040

do not care, so they do not share. The Apostle Paul was not a non-lover. He was also not a flirt. Now, a flirt is a person who is in love with love itself. Put in Christian terms, a flirt is a person who goes about trying to collect converts much as you might collect scalps to hang from your belt. The flirt is one who is

00:04:12.040 - 00:04:40.520

not so much interested in how deeply he loves, but rather in how many he loves. Paul was not a flirt. Paul was also not a seducer. Now, a seducer is an individual who makes false promises in order to gain love. The seducer is one who, well, you often hear it in Christian testimonies. They will suggest that their

00:04:40.520 - 00:05:04.520

life was a mess and they became a Christian and suddenly they are on top of everything, everything is magnificent, rosy, glorious in their entire lives. Now, sometimes that turns out to be the case. Sometimes it is not. The gospel does not promise a person success, but the seducer does. Paul was not a seducer. And also

00:05:04.520 - 00:05:32.480

Paul was not a rapist. Now, if a flirt is immature and a seducer is immoral, the rapist is criminal. The rapist is the person who forces love, who compels love. In Christian terms, it's the individual who commands commitment. I'm very uneasy because there are some Christians in America today who are seeking positions

00:05:32.480 - 00:05:52.760

of power, and it appears at least, that they want those positions in order to be able to make rules which are satisfactory to them to apply to everybody else. That's rape. You have to be especially careful of this kind of thing when dealing with young people. It's very easy to load guilt trips on

00:05:52.760 - 00:06:17.280

young people or to whip them into some kind of emotional frenzy around some campfire or other, and that kind of thing can be very, very unfair and forceful. Paul was not a rapist. He did not make people offers that they could not refuse. Also, Paul was not a smother lover. Now, a smother lover is a person who loves you

00:06:17.280 - 00:06:42.400

to death, a person who just won't take no for an answer. This is the oppressive kind of love that stacks the situation in such a way that you have no freedom of response. You see this kind of love in some television evangelists of our time. And also, Paul was not a legalistic lover. A legalistic lover is an individual who

00:06:42.400 - 00:07:03.840

loves because he thinks it is his duty to do so. He loves out of a sense of obligation. This kind of loving is unethical because it objectifies people. It makes them means to the end of obedience. You often see this kind of a distortion of love in Christians who have no social concern. They don't care

00:07:03.840 - 00:07:29.960

whether the one they go to is naked or hungry or sick or lonely or broken apart. All they are concerned about is to sing the gospel song and then move on. That is legalistic loving. And Paul was none of these things. He was a true lover. He respected those he loved. He genuinely cared for them. He offered to them no

00:07:29.960 - 00:07:51.280

false promises. He was very careful in his dealing with them so there was no compulsion. He honored the freedom of choice of others and he didn't do what he did out of a sense of duty and obligation, but out of a full heart. Whether it was his love for his young son in the faith Timothy or for the

00:07:51.280 - 00:08:08.720

Corinthians to whom our text this morning was written, whether it was to Felix or any of the others who persecuted him, whether it was to Epaphroditus or Silas or Luke or Demas, those who were with Paul in ministry at one time or another, for all of these he had a love which came out of

00:08:08.720 - 00:08:36.320

the very center of himself. And to explain that love, he said of himself, "By the grace of God, I am what I am and his grace toward me was not in vain." Now to understand the full sense of these words, you have to get the context in which they were written. The Corinthian church was broken apart by a number of

00:08:36.320 - 00:08:57.360

discords and arguments which are important but we don't have the time to notice them this morning. Paul writes to the Corinthians in an attempt to correct these situations and in order to point out his apostolic authority, he enters into a brief discussion of how he came to be an apostle. He points out that

00:08:57.360 - 00:09:20.040

after Jesus was risen from the dead, he specifically appeared to Cephas, we commonly call Cephas Peter. Jesus sought out Peter. Now remember, Peter was the one who had three times denied Christ and then wept bitterly about it. And it's a beautiful thing to think that Jesus Christ, in all of his risen glory, when he

00:09:20.040 - 00:09:45.200

comes back from death to life, seeks out the one who specifically and deliberately denied him. Jesus wants to console Peter. He is more concerned about the hurt in Peter than he is about the hurt in himself which was given to him by Peter. And Paul reminds the Corinthians of this. He then goes on to say that Jesus

00:09:45.200 - 00:10:07.200

appeared to other groups but another one to whom he specifically approved and Paul mentions the name is James. Now James was the brother of Jesus and you will remember that in the Gospel of John we are taught that James scorned Jesus and in Mark it says that James tried to restrain Jesus from going into his

00:10:07.200 - 00:10:33.040

ministry. So here is the resurrected Lord going to one who called him crazy and who tried to keep him from the task toward which God was calling him and for which he had been sent. So James had sinned against Jesus yet Jesus goes in resurrected glory and blesses him with his presence. And having pointed out

00:10:33.040 - 00:10:59.280

these two glaring examples, Paul then goes on to mention himself. He says, "I'm an apostle, yes, but I'm the least of the apostles because I persecuted the church." And he lays out the evil of his past and he says how amazing it is that this Jesus who went to a sinner like Peter who denied him and a sinner like James

00:10:59.280 - 00:11:23.120

who scorned him and tried to restrain him would have so much love in him that he would come to me the one who persecuted his church. Paul is amazed, utterly dumbfounded by the extent and the nature of that kind of love. And he concludes his discretion of it by saying, "It is by that love, it is by the grace

00:11:23.120 - 00:11:46.960

of God that I am what I am and his grace toward me was not in vain." Paul refers to this in other places in his letters. In 2nd Corinthians chapter 1 he says he is able to live the godly life because of God's grace. In 1st Timothy chapter 1 he says that he is able to serve and minister to others because of the grace

00:11:46.960 - 00:12:08.440

of God that is in him. In 2nd Timothy chapter 2 he says he is able to speak to others and bear witness on Christ's behalf because of the grace of God. In 2nd Corinthians chapter 12 he says that he is able to endure all the hardships of ministry and also the thorn in the flesh, some disease which bothered Paul,

00:12:08.440 - 00:12:33.040

some ailment of Paul's which hurt him all his life. He is able to bear all of these things because, he says, of the grace of God. "By the grace of God I am what I am." Now the grace of God, of course, is the unmerited love of God and it's a very powerful thing. I'm sometimes troubled about the fact that whenever we

00:12:33.040 - 00:12:58.560

speak of grace, we speak of it in rather sugary terms. We'll sing a song like "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound." Now there is no doubt about it, grace is very, very sweet. But in singing of grace like that, we forget the power that is in grace. I think of it as if we were standing beside Niagara Falls and we

00:12:58.560 - 00:13:21.680

heard the roar of that cataclysm of water as it crashed down, leaping and smashing and crashing and swirling and falling, and said, "My, how sweet the sound." We wouldn't say that, not of that roaring, powerful flood. And that's what the grace of God is. It is unstoppable. It is irresistible. It is life-transforming.

00:13:21.680 - 00:13:46.640

It is the flood tide of all the passion of the infinite heart of God. That's what grace is. Look what it did in the life of Paul. It's been pointed out many times that Jesus left 11 apostles to minister to the Jews and only one to minister to the Gentiles, to all the rest of the world. But that one was Paul. And Paul

00:13:46.640 - 00:14:10.320

traveled innumerable miles and he preached innumerable servants and he went through innumerable hardships until he had dotted the Roman Empire with churches. He describes himself as one who came to the task late, as one untimely born. But this one man, Paul, like some spiritual atlas, lifted the Roman

00:14:10.320 - 00:14:41.640

Empire to God. It took seven ages to build the Roman Empire. Paul evangelized it in 25 years. And looking back over what he had done, he put no pride in himself but said, "What I am, what I've been able to do, is by the grace of God. And the grace that he has given to me, he has not given me in vain." See, that grace

00:14:41.640 - 00:15:13.640

made Paul into a passionate lover. It gave him a new heart. Because he knew himself to be so loved by God, he could not help loving all the world in the name of God. So loved, he became a lover. I think we as Pittsburghers ought to be proud of the fact that our city is now the transplant capital of the world. More

00:15:13.640 - 00:15:32.360

organ transplants occur in this city than any other city in the world. When I was in the hospital in September, there were four heart transplant patients on the floor where I was in Presbyterian University Hospital. And I was interested to learn just this last week that a part of the heart transplant team there at

00:15:32.360 - 00:15:52.080

Presbyterian University Hospital is an Episcopal priest, a woman. And she ministers between that team of doctors and the patient and the family of the patient. She goes back and forth between them. She's in on all the consultations. She is even allowed to go into the operating theater and comes out at

00:15:52.080 - 00:16:14.320

various times carrying messages back and forth from the team to the family and the family to the team. Now it's a beautiful thing that such a servant of God should be in the midst of that transplant process. And you know why? Not just because ministers traditionally call upon the sick, but because God has

00:16:14.320 - 00:16:40.240

been in the heart transplant business for a long time. Do you remember what he said through the prophet Ezekiel? "I will take the stony heart out of their flesh and I will give them a heart of flesh that they may walk in my statutes and obey my ordinances forever." In other words, God by his grace, his powerful

00:16:40.240 - 00:17:06.580

unstoppable love, reached down into a person like Paul and he took out that stony heart. He took out that stern heart, that stone-throwing heart, that calloused heart, and he replaced it with the heart of a lover, a heart of flesh that moved in accordance to the statutes and the ordinances of God. And Paul recognizes

00:17:06.580 - 00:17:34.320

this and he writes to the Corinthians and thence to us, "By the grace of God I am what I am." The essence of what I'm trying to suggest to you this morning is this. When we have experienced the transplanting, transforming grace of God in our hearts, we will inevitably and invariably be overcome with gratitude.

00:17:34.320 - 00:18:08.600

And that gratitude to God shows itself in loyalty. And what is loyalty to God? Loyalty to God is love. The scriptures say, "We love because he first loved us." You remember a few years ago when a team of American missionaries went down to try to reach an aboriginal tribe in Ecuador called the Alcas. Very primitive

00:18:08.600 - 00:18:28.240

people, never contacted by white men before. For a number of months they made tentative contacts, flying over, dropping gifts, things of that kind. And eventually the time came when the five young American missionaries went to make their first face-to-face contact with these Alca Indians. Now we don't know what

00:18:28.240 - 00:18:55.200

happened then, but we do know that the Indians turned on those five missionaries and murdered all five. And do you remember how the world stood back in awe and amazement when the widows of those five men took up the same missionary task? And they themselves went in where no white faces had ever gone before. They

00:18:55.200 - 00:19:18.520

went into that tribe of Alcas and they brought them to the Lord Jesus Christ. They converted them and then they lived with them for an extended number of years in order that the gospel might be sealed in them. I sat one night and I talked with Elizabeth Elliot, the wife of one of those slain missionaries, and a

00:19:18.520 - 00:19:44.160

woman who had then gone into that place and lived with those Alcas for many years. And I said, "Elizabeth, where did you get the strength and the power and the commitment to do a thing like that?" And her reply was this, "I love because he first loved me." The love of God, the grace of God, so real, so totally

00:19:44.160 - 00:20:06.320

transforming in her life, that she could not hold herself back from that same kind of sacrificial loving. My friends, this is the secret of the history of the church. Christ loves the church. We often speak of Christ loving the world, of Christ loving sinners, but Christ also loves the church. Paul wrote, "Christ

00:20:06.320 - 00:20:26.680

loved the church and gave himself for it." He founded the church. He taught the church. He died for the church. He inspires the church. Occasionally I'll hear someone say, "Well, Jesus yes, but the church no." I want to be alive with Jesus, but I don't want to have anything at all to do with the church. That is very

00:20:26.680 - 00:20:49.480

shallow and very ignorant. You cannot be a part of Jesus without loving what Jesus loved. And Jesus loved the church. And so have the noblest of the company of Jesus. The apostles loved the church, and the martyrs loved the church, and the company of the saints who are in heaven loved the church, and the angels of God

00:20:49.480 - 00:21:11.560

loved the church. And it is because the church has been so loved of God that the church has become the greatest agency of love in the history of the world. It's the church that binds up the brokenhearted. It's the church that goes to captives. There are no other visitations in the county jail other

00:21:11.560 - 00:21:31.200

than those by Christians and members of immediate families. It's the church that's gone to the blind. It's the church that reached out and touched the lepers that all the rest of the world despised. It's the church that started hospitals and schools and universities and institutions for lost children and

00:21:31.200 - 00:21:51.900

places where the aged would be cherished. It's the church that has begun hospices to minister to those who are dying. It's the church that went out in compassion to the insane and the incurable. It is the church that established refuges for pregnant young

00:21:51.900 - 00:22:17.860

women who were alone in the world. It's the church that began ministry to the blind and the deaf and the mute and the crippled and the maimed. I have traveled this world. I've stood in the snows of Moscow and in the brilliant sunshine of Sydney. I've stood in the souk in Fes, Morocco. I've wandered through the island

00:22:17.860 - 00:22:43.140

of Bali and the Dutch East Indies. I visited the tea plantations of Sri Lanka. I've forded streams in Togoland and I've landed in airplanes on skis on the side of Mount Cook in New Zealand. I've been from one end of this world to the other and I have never seen a hospital established by atheism. I have never seen

00:22:43.140 - 00:23:13.900

a ministry of compassion lifted up by those who did not love the Lord. The church is the great agency of compassion in human history because being loved it must love. We love because he first loved us. By the grace of God the church is what the church is and his grace toward us was not in vain. So what I asked you

00:23:13.900 - 00:23:39.260

this morning is what kind of lover are you? Do you love yourself as you ought to love yourself? Is there a real and genuine love of the kind we're speaking in your marriage? Is there that kind of love within your family? Does the person who sits in the desk next to yours, whether it be in your corporate division

00:23:39.260 - 00:24:03.140

or in your classroom, understand yourself to be that kind of lover? Does your neighborhood know you as an emissary of love? What about your relationship to the church which is the fellowship of love? Do you speak well of the church? Do you seek to serve in the life of the church? Is your manner toward the church, your

00:24:03.140 - 00:24:25.260

behavior toward the church, one of love? Is that pledge card you handed in this morning or will hand in an expression of God's grace known transforming and transplanting your heart and you're expressing it in a great love? Is there that kind of loyalty in you? It's very easy to talk about love. What's hard is

00:24:25.260 - 00:24:52.260

to do it. And in order to be a lover, you must know what it is to be loved because it's only when love softens a heart that it becomes grateful and it's out of gratitude that loyalty comes. And loyalty is loving. I have been much touched recently by the efforts that are being made to locate lost and kidnapped

00:24:52.260 - 00:25:13.420

children. You see signs on the road, television advertisements on the sides of milk cartons and pop bottles. And when I see those, I think of how long God has been seeking his lost children. He started in the Garden of Eden. You remember how he said to Adam, "Where art thou?" And even today, the church's message

00:25:13.420 - 00:25:35.100

in the name of God to all of the people of the earth is, "Come unto me and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me and ye will find rest unto your souls." That is the carol of grace. Jesus Christ said to the church, "I give to you the keys of heaven and of hell." The church alone still holds those keys.

00:25:35.100 - 00:26:02.060

And when it goes out with the message of love and compassion in the expression of its loyalty, it carries those keys. So search your soul this morning. Is there gratitude in it? If there is no gratitude, then you have not yet known the grace of God. And you must know that grace to be grateful. And you must be grateful in

00:26:02.060 - 00:26:37.540

order to be loyal. And loyalty means love. That's the way to be a Christian lover. I set before you in his name then the path of life and the path of death. Choose life that you might live. That you might live a life of love. And so living, be loyal forever.

00:26:37.540 - 00:27:25.220

Let us pray. Father, if there are only stony hearts now hearing my voice, move by that grace common to thy spirit and soften what is hard so that there might be yielding to thee. And in yielding, loyalty. And in loyalty, love. We pray our prayer in the

00:27:25.220 - 00:27:34.160

name of the Lord of love. Amen. Amen. [no dialogue]