Bears All, Believes All, Hopes All, Endures All

Introduction

We will begin our study again this evening in the book of 1 Corinthians, chapter 13, if you want to be opening there. As you know, that’s been the theme of our study all this part of the week. I’d like to say just a few words before we begin our lesson tonight to express appreciation for the opportunity to be here. Appreciation to those of you who had us in your homes and treated us so royally, to the elders and brother and sister Harkrider and the Bannings for the good work that they are doing in this church and for the opportunity just to be among you. Marilyn and I were talking a little bit on the way over tonight about what an encouraging group this is. Awful lot of wonderful, encouraging and uplifting words have been spoken to us this week.

We can’t tell you how much we appreciate that. And we’re just thrilled to be a part of this work in a small way. Won’t it be wonderful when we don’t have to say bye anymore? I’ll tell you, this has flown by, and we went to some of these homes and visited for seemed like a flash, and then we had to leave. And it’s very frustrating. I would love it just to have about uh one solid year, I think, to be with Bob and Arlene and just talk, visit. Just doesn’t seem possible in this life, does it? But we want you to know what a joy it’s been to be here all during this series. And God willing, there’ll be other opportunities for us to work together in the days ahead in some capacity in this life.

But most of all, I know we’re all looking forward to that great day when our Lord returns, and when all of those who are his will be gathered to meet him in the air, where we will ever be with him. And toward that end, may God bless us all to be striving with all that’s in us. William Barclay said, there are only two kinds of people in this world. Those who are continually thinking of their rights, and those who are continually thinking of their duty. I think in the United States of America, in this particular century in the latter part of it, we have come to be a society in which people are thinking about their rights more than anything else. I personally believe that portends very bad things for the long run for our society.

Our duty as Christians is to love. And if we are continually thinking about our duty, then we’re continually thinking about how to manifest love to God and to our fellow man. If you have a problem losing your temper, getting irritated, getting upset, you probably have a mindset in which you’re thinking about your rights and your own importance. I like the saying when someone says, You made me so mad. I like the saying that says, No, you made you mad. Nobody else can make you mad. You make yourself mad. You’re the one that allows your reaction to situations. We decide how we react.

If our preoccupation is upon ourselves, that we matter, that we have rights, that this is my territory, that when somebody steps into it, they better watch out. That’s when anger gets out of control. That’s what I meant last night when I said we seem to lose ourselves when we get behind the wheel of our cars.

Because after all, brother and sister, we’re just slaves of our Lord. You know how many rights slaves had? None in essence. And yet the Lord regulated their behavior.

When you have the mindset that our responsibility as Christians is to love, that’s our duty. Then you can receive offenses over and over and over again. And just be reminded my duty is to love that person anyway. It’s just another wonderful opportunity to manifest the love of God through my life. Some have said one of the problems leading to mental illness is fighting for your own rights all the time. I’m convinced that sin has all kinds of bad effects on people. Not only spiritual effects and mental effects, but physical effects as well. I’m reminded of David when he committed the awful sin with Bathsheba and followed it with other sins, which eventually ended up with the murder of a man. And then his taking that man’s wife to be his own.

And it was as a result of those sins that we read these words from David. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.

I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave me the iniquity of my sin. But I would suggest to you that David was expressing the physical effects of sin upon his life when he would not confess it and face it.

For a Christian, the terrible effects of sin can be similar. It can have all kinds of effects upon us. It can lead to emotional trauma, which can lead to physical problems. This kind of turmoil within can affect our bodies in all kinds of ways. It can have effect on the blood flow to the organs in our bodies. It can affect the secretions of certain glands, which affect our health. It can change the tension of our muscles. And so the effects of sin, which lead to emotional trauma, which lead to physical difficulties, can show you that it’s better to have vegetables with love than a stalled ox with hatred. Proverbs 15, verse 17. In his book, The Practice of Psychiatry, Dr. Spurgeon English makes these observations. Emotions can produce sickness, particularly the following ones, and he’s not a preacher.

Jealousy, envy, ambition, rage, hatred, uncontrolled anger. Does those sound familiar to you as you’ve been listening to this series? And what we’re learning from this series is that love has all kinds of wonderful effects. If we’ll just learn what God tells us about love. And as Paul said in Ephesians 3, if we will be rooted and grounded in love, come to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, and be filled up with the fullness of God, it will have so many effects in our life we don’t even comprehend it. But if we don’t, the effects otherwise can be terrible. The Corinthian brethren had a problem being loveless. And in that church, you remember we’ve said how many problems there were? Divisions, suing each other, problems in the family, walking on weak brethren because they didn’t care about each other.

Abuse of the Lord’s Supper, being indifferent to each other’s needs, and even ruining the miraculous spiritual gifts. That’s how bad things can get when we don’t practice love. Well, are you sufficiently depressed? Then I want to remind you that at the end of this book of 1 Corinthians, the apostle, through inspiration, by God’s direct statement, said to those brethren, let everything be done in love. And so he saw hope for those brethren to do better. So there’s hope for me. And there’s hope for you. So you’re at 1 Corinthians 13. This chapter, you know, is the gem set in the midst of a cesspool of problems, and it stands out with its beauty and majesty in a way that I’m sure God intended for it to, like it couldn’t have in any other book.

1 Timothy, the first chapter, verse 5 says, the end of the commandment is love out of a pure heart. Proper theology, ladies and gentlemen, is no substitute for love. Devoted service is no substitute for love. The key to all learning is to love. And so important is it that the New Testament just keeps on emphasizing it over and over and over again. I want to run through some passages. You don’t have to turn to these. Colossians 3 says, above all these things, put on love. 1 Corinthians 14 says, follow after love. Philippians 1 says, abound in love, yet more and more. 1 Thessalonians 3 says, increase and abound in love. 1 Peter 4 8 says, be fervent in love. Hebrews 13 1 says, continue in love.

Philippians 2 2 says, having the same love. Hebrews 10 24 says, to provoke one another unto, and you can fill it in. Love and good works. 2 Corinthians 8 8 says, prove the sincerity of your love. The pinnacle of life and holiness. Healthy, happy, growing life as a Christian is love, ladies and gentlemen.

And in 1 Corinthians the 13th chapter, verses 4 through 7, we have been reading and studying together what God says love does. How does love act? And I’d like to remind you tonight of a little saying we expressed way back in the beginning. Sometimes we don’t feel like loving. And I’m telling you, the passage described here doesn’t talk about feeling love. Even though that certainly ought to be a component of our life. I don’t want to take one thing away from emotional love that flows forth in such marvelous ways. We ought to have a component of that, overflowing in our lives and in our families. There ought to be this kind of love and the emotional love together. What a combination. But what I said that first lesson, and I’ll say it again tonight, is the love we’re talking about in 1 Corinthians 13 goes beyond emotion.

And what we must learn is to act like love acts, whether we feel like it or not.

This is what love does. Fifteen verbs that describe how love acts. Let’s summarize them again tonight as we lead up to our lesson for this evening. Beginning in verse 4. Love suffers long. Love is patient with people, brothers and sisters. Love is kind. That means love is useful to others. Its highest principle is to serve, to do what’s best for another person. Love envies not. That means it’s not jealous. It’s happy when someone else succeeds. Love is not boastful. It’s not shooting off its mouth, making others feel inferior. Love is not puffed up. It’s inwardly not puffed up with an exaggerated opinion of itself. Love does not behave rudely. Love considers what is essential to the happiness of others. It’s thinking about its effect on others.

It doesn’t behave rudely. Love seeks not her own. Love is selfless, the opposite of selfishness. Love is not easily provoked. It’s not upset, irritated, or quickly angry at personal affronts. Love can take it. Love thinks no evil. It doesn’t keep books on offenses. It doesn’t make memories out of evil things. Love rejoices not in iniquity. It takes no pleasure in hearing or repeating unrighteousness, either his own or somebody else’s. You remember our talk about that last night. Because love knows how sin wounds the person himself and how it wounds God. Love rejoices with the truth. It rejoices when truth is taught and when truth is lived. And it tries to bring it out in others. But it will stand without compromise for what God says. Now some have said that as we come to verse 7, that we are building up to a crescendo.

You know that word for music? Crescendo. That’s when the music’s volume builds and builds and builds until it reaches such a height that it just overwhelms you. I think that’s what’s happening here myself. As God in verse 7 appeals to four statements of exaggeration.

Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

In the first place, I don’t believe there’s any human being that could do all of those things. But in the second place, look at the second expression believes all things. You’re supposed to believe all things? Does love believe all things universally? Well, I know he doesn’t because God tells us specifically in 1 John 4, beloved, believe not every spirit. 1 John 4 verse 1. But try the spirits whether they are of God. Certainly love doesn’t believe the devil or anything the devil has to offer. I’m convinced these are exaggerated statements to really emphasize what love will do, how far it will go. Within the limits of proper biblical boundaries, all things that come within the framework of divine approval is what this must mean. Now let’s talk about these one by one.

1. Love Bears All Things

As we’ve done in each one of the previous expressions, I’ve tried to explain to you where these words come from to give us a better concept of what the writer is telling us. The word used here is a word that in the Greek language carries with it the idea of suppressing, keeping under covering with silence. When the Lord said, love bears all things, he was not saying that love puts up with everything and gets shoved around because it has no dignity. And so it just puts up with everything, just whatever anybody wants to do. That’s not what he’s saying here. Out of regard, respect, and honest concern for the real value of persons, love will do everything it can to cover up the sin of that person.

I believe that’s what he’s saying. Love bears all things. Bears all things, not in the sense that I’ll put up with that, I will endure that trial. I think it means I will cover over the ugliness in someone else’s life to the greatest extent that I possibly can. I’ll try to cover up all that ugliness if I’m love. Let me ask you something, parents. If your children have done something ugly, out of your love for them as a parent, do you want that known by everybody? I don’t think so. Do you want it ignored? No, sir. Love is not going to ignore sin. It’s going to rebuke sin. It’s going to deal with sin, but it’s going to do its best to protect the person who sinned.

Let’s look at 1 Peter 4 and see if that concept isn’t taught by God. And I’ll tell you what, my beloved. By the time some of my brethren get finished with some of their other brethren, I don’t see a lot of love there. They’ll take a brother with whom they disagree and they’ll lamb blast him in the public and make him look like some awful, terrible person. I know there are times when you have to confront someone publicly with false doctrine. I understand that. But I also understand that there are ways that love takes care of that, and there are ways it doesn’t.

But the end of all things is at hand. Therefore be serious and watchful in your prayers, and above all things, have fervent love for one another. For love will cover a multitude of sins. I just think it’s like this. Love will do its best to throw a blanket over the sins and try to keep them contained as much as possible. As long as possible. And try to help correct the person, help him do what’s right under a blanket. As much as much as possible. Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all sins. Proverbs 10, verse 12. Hatred stirs up strife. But love covers all sins. Don’t we do that for our loved ones? I want you to be real serious in your thinking about that. If there’s someone very close to you in your family or that’s a part of your loved one’s circle, and they do something wrong, how do you treat that person?

How does love treat that kind of person? I think love does its best to bear all things, to cover, to suppress, to deal with a person in a way I would want to be dealt with myself. Then I want to ask you, doesn’t God tell us to love our enemies? Using the same word. And how does love act? Love will warn, it will rebuke, it will discipline, but it will cover, not expose.

And he took it a step beyond what any of us ever possibly can. Jesus Christ, our perfect pattern. Would you turn with me to Isaiah chapter 53? And read again that marvelous description of what our master, who is our pattern for everything we do, did for us.

Beyond. Not only did he try to cover our sin, but he took it upon himself. Isaiah 53, beginning in verse 4. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions.

The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We’ve turned every one to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

I’ll tell you how far it will go when Jesus is doing it. It will go so far as to say, not only will I try to cover your sin, but I will take it upon myself, and I will offer the sacrifice in your place so that your sin might be covered. Now I can’t do that. You can’t do that. Only Christ could do that. But certainly we can bear all things. Will we be willing to throw a blanket over the sins of others and try to protect them as long as we possibly can? Will we go so far as to sacrifice ourselves to try to help someone who’s in sin? I came across a wonderful story I’d like to share with you. Not that it in any sense touches the story of what Jesus did for us, but I think it’s a real-life human story that maybe will touch your heart.

A soldier was to die at the ringing of the curfew bell.

In love, he was with a beautiful young lady. She pleaded with the judge. She asked Cromwell to spare his young life. All in vain. Preparations were made for the execution. The city awaited the signal from the bell at curfew. The sextant, who was an old and deaf man, threw himself into the task of pulling the rope as he had for many, many years. He pulled and he pulled and he pulled, and no sound came from the bell at all, and he didn’t even know it. You see, the young lady had climbed to the top of the belfry, and she had reached out and caught hold of the tongue of that huge bell at the risk of her own life. And as he rang the bell, she was smashed against the sides again and again and again.

At length, when the bell ceased to swing, she managed to climb back to the edge and climb down, wounded and bleeding. Cromwell and the others were waiting and wanted to know why the bell didn’t ring. The girl arrived and told her story.

2. Love Believes All Things

And the poet said of her, at his feet she told her story, showed her hands all bruised and torn. Her sweet young face still haggard from the anguish it had worn. Touched his heart with sudden pity, lit his eyes with misty light. Your lover lives, said Cromwell. Curfew will not ring tonight. And so the life of another was spared because of the sacrificial love of another. Isn’t that what Jesus did for us? Brothers and sisters, to what extent do we bear the pain to help to cover the sins of someone else? Love bears all things. Now let’s return to 1 Corinthians 13. The next expression is love believes all things. Comes from the word pisto, which is the normal verb in Greek for believing, for faith.

It means to trust, to place confidence in, to be persuaded of.

Love believes all things. We know it doesn’t mean it accepts everything anybody says. I’ve already explained that to you from 1 John 4. Let me explain to you my understanding and challenge you to think for yourself.

I believe the Lord is saying that love acts this way. Instead of suspicious, being suspicious, and suspecting everyone, instead of being eager to denounce, like we often do. He got what he deserved. He’s gone too far, he’ll never change. And we get cynical and suspicious of people.

I did that for 13 years. The average lifespan of a dean of students is about five years. So I figure I did pretty well. But one of the things that it happens to you in that job, or it can, in the policeman’s job, other people whose job is to enforce rules and regulations, is you can begin to think people are pretty rotten. Because what you deal with most of the time are the bad things, the bad stuff. It’s the complaint department. It’s the department where everything comes that’s wrong. One of my prayers throughout that time was to ask God to help me never become a cynic. A cynic is a fault finder who just suspects people’s motives. He doesn’t believe in the goodness of people.

Love doesn’t act that way. I’m convinced that’s at least in part what Jesus is talking about here when he says love believes all things. I think what love does is it expects the best out of people. And it’s going to keep expecting the best. I don’t care how many times we disappoint each other. Folks, how many times have we disappointed the God of heaven? And does he ever give up on us? When someone sins, love doesn’t say I always knew he was rotten, and this just proves it. You see, this is a matter of the heart. Could I bring it close to home? I don’t know how many there are seated in this audience, mothers and fathers, who have children who have left the Lord, who have essentially, whether they did it literally or not, spit in your face about what you believe most in all the earth.

I cannot imagine that there are many things that hurt more than that. But I ask you, if you’re here tonight and you’re in that situation, have you given up on your son or daughter? Or do you still, deep down in the recesses of the love of your heart, still say they’re gonna come back? I believe that’s the way love is it’s gonna believe the best, it’s gonna expect the best. And when someone turns away and is not doing their best, love’s gonna believe the best anyway. That doesn’t mean love is naive. It just means it’s going to expect the best in people. We’re made in the image of God. And if we make a mistake as we deal with others, may I beg you, my brother and sister in Christ, make a mistake on the side of believing in all things.

Don’t allow yourself to become so negative and cynical that you just expect the worst. I think the Corinthians were anxious to be suspicious of each other, to look for the worst. That was one of their problems. And that ended up in fussing and fighting and fuming and difficulties. Job’s friends that I reference here, what did they think about Job? Let me ask you. With friends like that, who needs enemies? You remember? They came to Job and said, Well, you’re in pretty bad shape. We know you must have done something awful. When he hadn’t. And would you turn with me to Matthew 9? And look at the way folks treated Jesus. Matthew 9, verse 1. And so he got into a boat, crossed over and came to his own city.

And behold, they brought to him a paralytic lying on a bed. And Jesus, seeing their faith, said to the paralytic, Son, be of good cheer. Your sins are forgiven you. And at once some of the scribes said within themselves, this man blasphemes. But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, Why do you think evil in your hearts? For which is easier to say, your sins are forgiving you, or to say, arise and walk, but that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins, he said to the paralytic, arise, take up your bed and go to your house. The part I want to emphasize there is, what was their first thought about Jesus? Something wicked. There wasn’t anything wicked in Jesus. But do you think there were a lot of folks thinking wicked things about him?

3. Love Hopes All Things

Ah, yes. Love doesn’t act that way. And it seems to me that’s the essence of what Jesus is telling us about love here through the apostle Paul. One other point about that before we go to the next. Think about Jesus picking his twelve apostles. By any standard, it was twelve losers, wouldn’t you say? But did he give up on Peter? No, sir. He believed all things. Did he give up on John, the Son of Thunder? No, sir. And because he didn’t, John turned into the what? The apostle of love. And he doesn’t give up on us either. May God help us to develop this quality of love. But next, the writer says, love hopes all things. Love hopes all things. El piso. The anticipation of good.

What happens when you have covered sin and love? When you believed the best, and it still doesn’t turn out. It doesn’t turn out the way you believed it would and should. Your son or your daughter is still a prodigal. You believed the best. You’re just expecting the best things, and they’re still out there doing rotten things. Your husband, who’s never obeyed the gospel, or your dear wife, whom you love deeply, has never become a Christian. Someone in the church has been disciplined, but they will not respond. They’re being stubborn and mule headed. I’ll tell you what you do if you love like God loves. You will hang on to hope anyway. And you’ll cling to it with all your being because as long as God lives and God’s grace is present, there’s hope.

Love is hopelessly optimistic. It refuses to accept failure as final. If you don’t remember anything else, I hope you’ll remember that. I’m convinced that’s what he’s telling us here. Love hopes all things. It refuses to accept failure as final. Did God hope for Israel? Did they give him much hope? Did Jesus hope for Peter? Did he give him much hope? Stuck his foot in his mouth every time he turned around. Did Paul have hope for the Corinthians? Well, he ended up the book by saying, let all things be done in love, so there was still hope. Many a wife out of love has held on to her husband with the rope of hope. Many a parent has held on when there was nothing else to hold on to.

They held on to their child with hope. Many a beloved friend and brother in Christ has held on with love to a fallen brother with a rope of hope. When faith gets clouded in, we hold on to hope anyway. I like the example of someone who was asked to come see the matter horn, and the day they got there to see the matter horn, this beautiful mountain, it was all clouded in. So what do you do? Well, there isn’t any matter horn. Let’s go home. Often when faith is fogged in, we give up on it. But hope doesn’t. Love hopes all things. Love doesn’t bail out when things don’t go well. When one is disappointed, or when one is sinful, love waits and waits and waits because there are enough promises in God’s word to make hope work.

4. Love Endures All Things

But I want to ask you. What about it when things get worse and worse and worse instead of better? When you’ve born, you’ve tried to cover, you have believed the best. You have hoped and you’ve hoped, and it got farther and farther and farther out. That’s why I said at the beginning, I think this is a crescendo. Because what does love do then? Then it bears all things. And the word used here, the word hoopino, I’d like to tell you about that word a little bit because it makes this thing come alive. It’s a military term that has to do with being positioned in battle against incredible opposition. It means bear up courageously under tremendous suffering and obstacles.

It’s like a soldier in a foxhole with a thousand army men coming at him, and he’s by himself.

And he hangs in there anyway. No wonder God said in 1 Corinthians 13 8, love never fails. Stephen lying on the ground as they’re throwing rocks at him to kill him, because of what? Because he stood up for Jesus Christ. And as he is dying and being pummeled with rocks, love bears all things. As he pled to God to forgive the ones that were killing him.

Would you go with me to Hebrews chapter 12? And read with me again that marvelous passage about our master. Verse 1 beginning, therefore, we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses. Let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross and despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the majesty on high. My beloved, even when our children return hurt and bitterness and hate and sarcasm to their loving parents, year after year after year in rejection and never, never seems.

Turn back. Love bears up anyway.

Love bears all the hurts and the wounds and the sins and the disappointments. It tries its best to cover them with a blanket of silence. It feels sympathetic, it feels redemptive, and even bears the pain if it can. Then it believes the best, the very best. It’s never cynical, in spite of the way it’s been treated and wounded. And when love’s believing is betrayed, it turns to hope. Because God is God, He can do anything, He still rules, and so love will hope and hope and hope. And even when hope grows thin and dim, love still endures.

It endures with triumphant confidence that God who gives his children peace can still give us peace. You see, my beloved, love is never overwhelmed. You cannot stop love. It cares too much to give up. It will die caring. It will die being spit on. And ask God to forgive. Tragically, it’s hard to come by that kind of love among us. But God still said, let all be done in love. And we can work toward that pinnacle and get better at it. Reinhold Niebuber said about the church at Corinth that it was kind of like Noah on the Ark. If it weren’t for the storm outside, he couldn’t have stood the stink inside. And sometimes that’s the way it gets in God’s church, but there’s still hope if you love.

Conclusion

Now, if we know the importance of love, and we know it gives us spiritual and physical and mental health, and we know that it gives us wholeness, and we know it’s so important because it makes us like Christ, and we know God has said it’s the greatest thing and the most important thing there is. Wouldn’t we want to know how to make it part of our life? And that’s what God’s telling us in 1 Corinthians 13. Here’s how love acts. May God bless us to acknowledge that God has commanded us to love, and therefore we’re capable.

Let’s acknowledge that we have the power to do it. You remember Ephesians 3? Now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all we ask or think. You think you could ever accomplish what we’ve described in this series in your lifetime? I say, no, I just don’t think I can ever get there. And I’ll tell you, yes, you can with the help of God through the power that works in us, Ephesians 3. Let’s be filled up with the fullness of God. We’ve got to believe that it can happen. And then let God’s Spirit, through His Word, fill us up with all the fullness of God. And then you know what would happen? What would happen is exactly what Jesus said should happen in John 13.

He said, the world will look at you and they’ll say, they must be Christ’s disciples. He said you to love one another as I have loved you, and the world will know that you’re my disciples. Can’t you see that this is the essence of being a Christian? I want you to know you’ve been a wonderful audience. Having preached for a little while, it’s reasonably easy to tell if somebody’s staying with you. And you have been a most attentive and appreciative and encouraging audience. And I pray that God may bless every one of us with the greatest ability that we have the capacity to fulfill. To make love the greatest of these, in our own lives.

And if God can bless us toward that end, then one day we’re going to hear Jesus say to us, Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joys that are prepared for you. Don’t you want to be there? Maybe there’s someone here tonight who’s not a Christian yet. You haven’t yet learned what life is about if you haven’t given your life to Christ. We would invite you to come and confess before this audience that you believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And Jesus said that believing you can have life in his name. Because believing will lead you to do what he said. Which was to repent of your sins and to be baptized in water for the remission of sins, to begin a new life of service and of love.

And if you’re a Christian who’s fallen away, we’d invite you to come and make your life right this very night while we stand and as we sing.