The Importance Of Love

Well, good morning everybody. My name's Rene, another one of the pastors here at TLC. Super glad that you guys are with us. All right, if you've been coming to Twin Lakes Church this year, you know that for the last couple of months, we've been raising pledges for our hoped for, prayed for, anticipated hope center. Our portables are falling apart. We need to replace them with a home for all of our outreach ministries. So the question is, did we reach our goal? Will we be able to build this building? Who wants to hear the results of the hope center pledges? Who's excited? All right, I'm gonna tell you at the end of my message.

But first, probably the most famous surfing photo ever taken was this. This is up at Mavericks, and anybody know that surfer's name? Jay Moriarty. Jay grew up here in Santa Cruz, became, already became very well known by the time he was nine years old, surfing incredibly. But he became world famous for surfing Mavericks. This is also Jay, amazing. But Jay could surf anything on any board, a legend. But what he became known for was his kindness. And here is why that is exceptional. Local surfers will tell you surfing culture has this stereotype of being chill and mellow. But it is not. I have personally, this year in fact, been cussed out, yelled at, flipped off by surfers. In what surfers call the lineup, waiting for a wave, it can get mean. But Jay stood out because he was different.

In fact, he was attending Cabrillo College right here, studying to be an EMT because what he wanted to do with his life was to help others. Tragically, he died in a diving accident. But then signs started popping up all over town, you probably saw them. They said, "Live like Jay." Now what did that mean? Well, I remember reading Surfer Magazine on the 10 year anniversary of Jay's death, and they had amazing tributes from all kinds of local surfers and also surfing luminaries from all around the world. And you know what? They did not talk about one thing. Surfing. They almost never mentioned his amazing gifts and remarkable skills.

So what in the world did they talk about when they talked about a surfer? Well, let me show you what they said in that article. He was a great role model, a gracious spirit, had a generous smile, a love for life, a gift from God. He remained free of self-pity, arrogance, jealousy, or ego. As we watched him grow up here in Santa Cruz, he stayed just as pure and innocent as he always was. Well, I bring this up because you and I, the way I see it, we are out there in the lineup. Whether you surf or not, every day. You're in the lineup commuting. You're in the lineup at work, at home, at school, and we see a lot of this, right? I mean, mean faces, mean voices around us, and it is not just your imagination.

Harvard Business Review recently did an article, The Rudeness Epidemic, talking about how rude our general culture is getting, and I love their illustration of what it feels like out there right now in the lineup of life, getting attacked, hated, ignored. The bad news is this surrounds us, but the good news is we can surf through it with grace. We can live like Jay, we can live like J-E-S-U-S, as we learn the lost art of love, because God calls us to be an alternative to the world, to be in the world but not of it, and that's what we're talking about in this series.

We're studying the most famous chapter in the Bible about love. 1 Corinthians 13 is known as the love chapter. We're studying this for the next five weeks leading up to Mother's Day, and this morning, what I'm gonna do is do a deep dive on the first three verses, but before we start the series, I wanna give you the context for the whole thing, and I really wanna read you the whole passage. You will recognize the words. You have seen these words on posters, on cards, in books. You've heard them in songs. You've heard them at weddings. You've heard them in church, but what do they really mean? What are they really about? I think you may be surprised.

So these are the words of one of the earliest followers of Jesus, the Apostle Paul. These were written about 2,000 years ago, and he said this, "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I'm only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and I have faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all that I possess to the poor, if I surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing." Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. It is not rude. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

Now, where there are prophecies, they will cease. Where there are tongues, they will cease. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror. Then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part. Then I shall know fully even as I am fully known. And now these three remain. Faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. Amen?

Amen. 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter. Now, the problem when you read 1 Corinthians 13 is that it's so beautiful and it's so famous, right? Paul, what a wordsmith, like on a par with Shakespeare, right, with the inspiration behind those words. Problem, when you and I usually hear it, it's almost like a standalone poem, like I just read it to you. But actually, this is part of a letter. In fact, it's chapter 13 of a letter to people called the Corinthians. And that is a very important clue to the context because it's part of a conversation. It's part of a story. And if you know the story behind the words I just read to you, it will change the way you see those words dramatically.

So let me tell you the story. Here's the Mediterranean world of the Roman Empire 2,000 years ago. You can see Spain, Rome, Greece, Asia Minor. Now, zoom in because if you wanted to ship something from this side of the world over to Italy, over to Rome, what you had to do is you had to sail all the way around this landmass here, IKEA, the lower half of Greece, or you could take a shortcut and sail straight through here. There was this tiny isthmus. It was less than four miles wide. And they would either drag ships across or transfer their cargo to waiting ships. This route would save hundreds of miles, tons of money, tons of time. And that is where Corinth was. It was almost like an ancient Panama Canal.

But that had become possible only through Roman technology. Just a few years before Paul writes this letter of 1 Corinthians to the Corinthian people who lived there, Corinth had been an abandoned, destroyed ruin for over a century. And then the Romans sought strategic advantage. They built ports on both sides with a new technology they had just invented, hydraulic cement. And they put in kind of a dry canal with almost railroad tracks to get over this isthmus. And this city exploded. It just boomed. Imagine all these sailors, all these merchants, all these businessmen going through your town, staying in your town. Corinth went from literally zero people to 10 times larger than Athens in just a couple of decades.

I mean, if you brought property in Corinth just a few years before this letter was written, your property was now worth triple what you paid for it. Corinth was hip. Corinth was rich. Corinth was where the people who wanted to make it came from all over the world. It was super diverse. Even their statues reflect this. They do not look like most Roman elites. Look at this guy. He's got an afro. He's got sideburns. I saw this in the museum when I visited Corinth and I thought, Richard Roundtree in shaft, right? It is. This was a Corinthian. I mean, let me summarize. Corinth was a booming young city full of innovators and high achievers and investors, diverse and multiethnic. Every person in Corinth was an immigrant. It was sort of a hub of commerce.

There was also a lot of sex and alcohol abuse. In fact, looming over Corinth was a mountain. And on top of the mountain was a temple of Aphrodite where over 1,000 temple prostitutes stayed very busy. Nobody came to Corinth to live a life of rules. They came to Corinth because there were no rules. And now, if you don't see any parallels between Corinth and the Bay Area, you haven't been paying attention because what I just described describes the San Francisco Bay Area, doesn't it? During the first gold rush and each new gold rush, aerospace, tech, AI, everything. So this letter is very relevant to us.

And one day, the Apostle Paul kind of finds himself stranded in Corinth because of a kind of a mix-up and he ends up starting a business and starting a church. And some of these people were Paul's very first converts there. Now, think about this. They were already ambitious. Innovators, confident visionary leaders, gifted people. So when they became Christians, all of this transferred over to the church. However, they were also brash and immature and rude and cocky. The Silicon Valley parallels continue.

So listen, when you read that list, love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious, not boastful, et cetera, where does that list come from? Why did Paul think of this list? Was Paul just sitting around when somebody said, "Paul, what is love?" And he reached for his guitar and said, "Well, love is kind of like this." And he starts strumming. No, he's correcting them. They were great in so many ways, but they were impatient, unkind, envious, boastful, arrogant, irritable, resentful. Yes, and they were also, as you pick up, as he writes, eloquent, gifted, intelligent, knowledgeable, charismatic, faith-filled, hard workers. But you know, gifted people can be jerks. Religious people can be jerks. Gifted religious people, forget about it. That's what Paul's addressing here.

This is why Paul says, and now knowing that context, can you see what these words mean? He's saying, men and women, you can have eloquence that is supernatural. You can have amazing insights, amazing faith. You can be radically in favor of social justice and helping the poor. You can be so flat out committed to God that you're ready to die for your faith. You're so zealous. And yet, not just be immature, but basically be spiritual, nothing. Not even connected to God at all. If you don't have love. And if you're thinking, wow, all those times I listened to this at weddings and it sounded so soothing, but this is an intense correction. Now you're starting to get it. That's the story behind this.

So now that you know the context, how do we apply it to us today? We don't need to hear this at all, do we? I heard Tim Keller decades ago say that this applies to three groups in every church, and what he said just hit me right between the eyes. So I'm paraphrasing as I remember what he said as I explained this to you. And I'm really gonna spend 90% of my time on this first point because I think this is the primary application. To those who think they are gifted, and specifically gifted in ministry, this is a warning.

True story. There was once a gifted young pastor in a storefront church in Indianapolis who started a beautiful congregation in the 1950s. He and his wife were very serious about realizing the kingdom of God on earth. They adopted five children from around the world, Navajo, Korean, black. His church ran a free restaurant. Can you imagine that? Homes for the elderly. He was a great communicator, self-assured on stage, master of the spoken word. He later moved to California, started a church up in the city. His church ran day camps, a food pantry. The mayor of San Francisco gave his church an award for all that they did. Then the governor of California, Jerry Brown, did too.

But suddenly, this pastor kind of became more rock star than preacher. Became arrogant. Became rude. And on November 18th, 1978, the Reverend Jim Jones led more than 900 of his followers to drink poison Kool-Aid. The tragic example of exactly what Paul is saying here. Did he have gifts? Yes, loads. Did he have eloquence? Yes, charisma, charity in spades. But do you remember what Jesus said? Beware of false prophets disguised as harmless sheep but are really vicious wolves by their what? By their talents, by their gifts, by their fruit, you will know them.

One of the tragedies of Christian history is so often we have lived like Jesus said, by their gifts and talents and results, you will know them. Jesus said fruit. The Bible talks about the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. There are plenty of great speakers, charismatic, visionary leaders who would get an F on these things. But they get a pass from everybody because they're so gifted. Pastors should never get a pass on this, including me. But this isn't just about cult leaders or pastors. This is for all of us who are using our gifts. And I hope you're using your gift to serve people.

Many of you here in this service are in ministry in this church leading Bible studies or other ministries. You help in recovery, counseling people, grief share groups, music ministry, youth ministry. You're on mission teams. You work as a greeter, an usher, men's and women's ministry. And I appreciate so much your service. You serve it in our food pantry. The subtle danger is to say, look at the people I'm helping, look at the things I'm doing, look at what I'm accomplishing. I must be something because I am doing something.

In fact, let's just get very personal here. I have learned a skill. Honestly, it's the only skill I have, right? I'm good at speaking. But that means I can fool people easily. And I can be fooled myself very easily. I can think, well, I guess I'm really something. I must be something. They think I'm something. And Paul comes along and says, to me, if you think that your gifts or your talents or your success in the church, if you think, Rene, that those are dials on your soul's dashboard to tell you how you're really doing spiritually, you are way off base. You're so wrong. You could be in trouble. Your engine might be ready to blow up because the dial you're supposed to be looking at is how am I doing on the fruit of the Spirit?

In fact, listen carefully. If you get your identity from your ministry, your success, instead of just from Jesus and how he loves you unconditionally, Paul is saying that is actually the opposite of the gospel. Because in the gospel, God comes to you and says, I love you, not because you're good and not because you're gifted and not because you're successful, just because of my grace, period. And when I get this and when I respond to that in joy, then I'm gonna grow on the fruit of the Spirit, then I'm gonna grow in love.

So the message to those who think that they're gifted is don't just focus on your gifts. Grow in love, starting with God's love for you. See, what happens so easily if you're a gifted person, if you're a successful person by some standard, is you start to think, God loves me, I'm important to God because of what I do. Especially if you're sincerely giving it your all, trying your hardest, look at what I'm doing for him, I'm laying myself out, I'm burning out for Jesus, I must be something. And Paul is saying here that is actually smothering his grace in your heart.

Because you know what that leads to? And it does lead to in churches, and it has led to this in my own life. I talk a lot about this in a book I wrote about it called Grace Immersion. It leads to all of this. When you are relying on your own giftedness and saying what proves my worth is how hard I work and what I do, it leads to impatience and unkindness and envy of other ministries, and you feel like you've gotta boast so that people notice you, and you get irritable, and you get resentful, there's no joy, there's not a delight in God's grace to you because you're not drawing off of his love. You're working off your gifts.

And so you're always getting your feelings hurt, you're always wanting more recognition. Let me ask you this question. Honestly, are you very busy in the Lord's work? And yet, you're not a warm person. When people talk about you, they don't say, what a loving person he is. What a loving person she is. They say, what a talented person they are. Paul says, you could be just a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And by the way, that's not just poetry, that's pagan worship he's describing in Corinth in the pagan temples was normal. When the worshipers came in, they made noise with gongs and cymbals, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, to kind of get the attention of the gods who might have their attention turned away somewhere. And Paul says, you know what it amounts to is you're trying to get God's attention. Or you're trying to get somebody's attention.

And how relevant is this in the social media area? If you didn't post it, you didn't do it. It can be all for show. And it can lead to a loss of your authentic self and a desperation to just be on all the time. And so the antidote is to settle down into the love of God for you. And determined to follow leaders, not just because of their charisma or their giftedness. Like I said, cult leaders can be gifted and charismatic. Authoritarian dictators are usually gifted and charismatic. But you follow people when they demonstrate the fruit of the Spirit. Because without love, they're nothing.

And then secondly, to those who think they're ungifted. If you don't feel like you're gifted, first you're wrong. Because Paul's been saying in the chapters leading up to this that absolutely every single person in the body of Christ has been gifted by God. But maybe what you feel like is nobody's asking you to be a leader, nobody's asking you to sing a solo, nobody's telling you you're special. And so you can get discouraged and you can say, I'll never be able to lead a Bible study, never be able to get up on stage to speak or sing. Paul is saying you're falling prey to the same error.

In the Jesus world, greatness is not about being a good speaker or having great charisma. That is not even what works the best, right? What did Jesus himself say? We studied it leading up to Easter. By this everyone will know that you're my disciples if you love one another. What's going to change the world is not if you become world famous. What's gonna change the world is if you sort of become famous or known in your group of friends or your neighborhood or your family or your apartment complex or work at school for being loving. Don't compare your gifts to others. Grow in love. If you're loving in Christlike, you will always have an impact.

When I was in college, I was renting a house with several other students in downtown San Jose on 12th Street and a little guy around 16 years old lived next door to us with his grandparents and he had Down syndrome. His name was Robert Bronkowski. Now Robert's symptoms were pretty severe. He really wasn't capable of much speech but he hung around with us college kids all the time and we took it upon ourselves to teach Robert how to write and then how to write his own name. Robert Bronkowski. That's kind of a challenge for anybody, right? But he worked and worked on it all semester and one night we had him over for dinner, spaghetti, and he tried again really hard and he did it. And we cheered and we even carried him on our shoulders all around the kitchen and he just laughed and laughed and laughed. We had a great time.

Well one day that same semester, a girl I was dating who I really thought I was in love with broke up with me and I was devastated. And I came home and I sat on our front porch and I had my head in my hands and I just wept and wept and wept like only a young adult can weep when a relationship, maybe their first serious relationship just collapses. And all of my roommates came by and said things like, hey, that's tough and just like left. And I was just alone weeping and then Robert Bronkowski came over and he put his arms around my shoulders as I wept. He didn't say a word. You could say he wasn't trained, skilled, or gifted as a counselor but he came and just sat with me as I wept.

And then after a few minutes, suddenly he takes off too and I started crying more. Even Robert doesn't like me! Half an hour went by, I'm still crying. Then Robert returns and he hands me a folded piece of paper like a little card and he hands it to me and sits down next to me, puts his arm around my shoulder again. And I unfold this paper and written all over it in big block letters is Robert Bronkowski, Robert Bronkowski, Robert Bronkowski. Because he knew it would make me happy. And it was the best sympathy card I have ever received from anyone to this day. Yeah, Robert used the only gift he had. But Robert knew it would be meaningful to me. It was his love that was transformative.

And there's one last group that this says something to. To those who think they're good. You know, maybe you're saying, well wait a minute, I'm trying to live a pretty good life here. You're telling me what? Giving to the poor and accomplishing great things at church or wherever is worthless? Well, what Paul is saying to you is, man, you could be a martyr, right? You could give all your money away to the poor and still actually be missing what it's all about. Like John wrote, this is love. Not that we love God, it's not about us, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

The essence of Christianity is not your achievement or your show of love or your good deeds, but it starts with God's love for you. Jesus died on the cross for you. And only love can explain it, right? He got nothing out of that. It was all love. And John goes on, dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. In other words, it starts with his love for you. If you look at his love for you, and as your pride gets melted with that, and as the reality of his no strings attached love starts to just capture your imagination, you don't say, okay, so what do I have to do in order to get to heaven? You say, oh, I love you so much, Lord, and now I wanna just overflow with that love to my neighbor. Not to prove anything, but just as a natural response. He's saying to you, don't rely on your good deeds. Grow in love.

The solution is the same in every case. Grow in love, the love of God for you. You know, you could kind of paraphrase it this way. If he were writing today, perhaps Paul could have said, if I have perfectly orthodox doctrine and stand on the right side of every issue and vote biblically, and if I lead a moral life, but have not love, I'm nothing. If I look good and act good and sound good, but have not love, I'm only a posturing actor or a loud-mouthed influencer.

I'll close with this. Remember J. Moriarty? What Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians 13 is we have an opportunity to be this guy or this guy. Now a lot of church culture wants this guy. A lot of pop culture wants this guy. Paul is saying when it comes to following Jesus, you can be an actor or you can be the real thing. Let's pray.

Our Father, we ask now that you would help us to see as we give you ourselves that it's your love which drove your son and now it's your love that should drive us, help us to grow in your love, and we ask this in Jesus' name, amen.

And now I will fulfill my promise. Would you like to know the results of the Hope Setter Pledge campaign right now? Okay. First a few words. If you are not able to make a pledge, please no guilt. Maybe you don't have the funds right now. Times are tough. Just rejoice with us that there are people that God has enabled to do this. And if you're joining us for the first time, met some first-time visitors already over at LAUF this morning, here's what this is about.

Here's an aerial photo of our campus taken by Jim Holderman the other day. The Hope Center is gonna be a place here on our campus that gives our food and recovery and support, adult ed ministries and more a permanent home because the portables that they're in right now are just falling apart. And it also will complete the expansion of the Nazareth Bible College and Seminary in Nazareth, Israel. For the past two months, we've been raising pledges for this. But first, you know what really moved me were the many notes we received like this one. I'm an 85-year-old widow. Joining you online Saturdays and much encouraged each week. There were so, so many beautiful notes like this which were very moving for me.

So here it is, here's the big picture. The total pledge amount we received so far is about $7 million in pledges. And I know that number will go up because every day we keep getting more pledges especially in this era of inflation. I am blown away by this. You're so generous. Then this week, the church board decided to add a million from this from two other accounts that were unused funds including money that was leftover from the previous building campaigns bringing our total to $8 million. Now, this is under the 11.3 million. That's about a $10 million building budget plus a million dollar contingency that we were aiming for.

But you know what's interesting? Watch this, this is right in line with where we were on each of the two previous buildings at this point of the process. In phase one, the children's building. Phase two, the Lofton College Ministry Center. And now phase three, the Hope Center. Every single time at this point in the process we were right around 3 million short of our goal. Yet every time we proceeded, and I'm so glad we did because we have those buildings and every single time God provided. So we are going to proceed in faith, yet not blind faith because we have this history. We're so excited about this. So excited.

And I have to tell you one major difference this time is the church has savings that we could use if needed to actually make up the difference. So there is zero, zero chance of us going into debt on this building. But you know what? I believe God still has some surprises in store for us, ways that the sea will part as we step forward. So details, if you've pledged a monthly amount, please begin to give your pledge. Permits take a long time, so groundbreaking will probably happen in about a year. And we hope to open the Hope Center in summer 2026. But most importantly, please pray. In fact, let's pray together right now.

I just want to give God glory and dedicate this day. Would you stand with me? And then we're going to close with a song. Heavenly Father, we praise you for what you have done. We dedicate the funds pledged to this project to your glory. And I ask that you would enable us to fulfill our pledges according to your will and your provision and provide in your way for this launching pad for ministry. And also Lord, we pray for all the lives that will be touched, that will be fed, that will recover, that will be saved through the ministries in this facility. And with such joy, we pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, our matchless Savior. Amen.