Not Boastful, Puffed Up, Rude, Self Seeking

Introduction

Let’s be opening our New Testaments this evening to 1 Corinthians chapter 13 again. As you know, our series of studies is centered on this beautiful passage of Scripture. One of the disadvantages to doing a series is that when people come on the third or fourth lesson, they haven’t heard the other parts of it. So we’ll just have to ask your indulgence in that area and hope that you will get the tapes and listen to the other parts of it. Because it will not be possible to preach all those lessons again. But we’re certainly delighted to have you with us tonight and hope you can come back for the rest of this series tomorrow night and Wednesday night as we study this gem of truth that God has set for us in the midst of a book that deals with problems.

I’d like to say again this evening that one of the most encouraging aspects of this study is that it’s found in 1 Corinthians. God at the end of that book in chapter 16 says to these brothers and sisters in Christ, let all that you do be done in love. And the word for love he uses in that passage is agape, the noblest and highest form of love, which is spoken of God himself. And I’ve said before in this series, if God could say that to this church, to these brethren with all the problems they had and say it with encouragement, then he can say it to us, and we all have hope of at least in part fulfilling what God says. And so while sometimes I get carried away and talk about things we’re lacking in terms of what God says about love, I want us all to be reminded that there’s hope that we can improve.

Every one of us can get better in being closer to what God tells us to do. Well, we’re glad you’re here. And we hope God will bless our study together tonight. And I hope you will pardon me if I take just a moment and thank God that my father’s here and my sister and her husband. And appreciate the amens too, because I say hearty amen with you for all the great influence that has been in my life and in the lives of so many others, and that continues to be. And I’ll have to tell you, he’s 84 years old and still leads a prayer like that. And his mother’s still alive. At 103. So some of the rest of us hope we have those genes real strong in us.

But God bless you, Dad. It’s wonderful to have you in the audience. Let’s turn our attention now to 1 Corinthians 13. And let’s read together the first seven verses. We’ve studied the first three and part of first four, but it will be good for us to set the stage again. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become a sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.

Love suffers long and is kind. Love does not envy. Love does not parade itself, is not puffed up, does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth. Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. Just reading that much, doesn’t that want you make you want to know as much as you can about this subject? Love never fails. Would you want to be a part of something that never fails? The bucks are doing pretty good this year. But I wouldn’t say they never failed. And I don’t know of anything else in life where you could say, if you can be a part of this, it will never fail.

But love never fails. The passage goes on to say, prophecies, tongues, miracles, knowledge, they’re going to cease, but love is not going to cease.

These three. But the greatest of these is love. Can you understand then, my beloved, why we will want to spend a lot of time discussing the theme? The greatest of these is love. I hope that every one of us in this audience has instilled deeply within us a desire to be a part of what God has described here as fully as we can. Because it never fails. And to the degree that we instill within us the capacity that God has given us to love as He has loved us, to that degree we’ll succeed in His service. And it’s when we cease to be loving as God is that we fail. Jesus once said, Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, strength, and mind, and a second commandment is likened to it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, and on these two hang all the law and the prophets.

What that says to me is if we can come to comprehend this concept that never fails, it’ll surround everything else we do. And everything else will fall into place. That’s why it’s so critical. Now we learned in these first three verses that even though you had the gifts of the Spirit, which were given to the early church, as God was framing the church and revealing his will to us, even if you had the greatest of those gifts, and he goes on to speak of it in hyperbole, I think, when he says, All mysteries and all knowledge, if you understood everything, you never will. But if you did, if it were not undergirded, surrounded, and energized by love, it adds up to zero. And so last night we began a careful consideration of verses four through seven.

Because in those few short verses, we find God’s description of how love acts. We do not find a careful, rigorous definition. What we find is how love acts. And so there are 15 verbs in these verses that tell us what love does. And ladies and gentlemen, the love described in this passage that God wants us to partake of can never be separated from action. God’s description of love is deeds, selfless deeds on behalf of others like God has done for us. Oh, and what a wonderful experience it is to look at this beautiful flower that God’s given us and take it apart and examine it in detail and say to God, help me understand every facet of this marvelous subject which never fails. So that’s what we’re doing.

1. Love Does Not Parade Itself

And tonight we’ll continue that quest as we look at the next several expressions in these verses. Love suffers long and is kind. Love does not envy. Those are the ones we talked about last night. And we explained in some detail what God’s trying to tell us, and hopefully we gained a great deal from it. But let’s start now with the next expression. Love does not parade itself, is not puffed up. I think those two go very well together. Because while one of them expresses the outward nature of pride, love does not vaunt itself or parade itself. The other expresses the inward attitude which brings about that outward display. Love is not puffed up. So the first represents the verbalizing of pride, and the second represents the attitude of pride that is behind it.

Now, let’s take a look at these words again. Love is not boastful, says this passage. There are several versions of that particular word. You see the word here in the Greek is purporos. It’s from a root word in Greek that literally means a windbag. Which is pretty good description of what the Lord’s talking about here. As far as I’m aware, this is the only place in the New Testament this particular word is used, but it’s certainly used in other writings by the Greeks. Love is not that way. Let me read you some other versions of this particular expression. Love does not boast. Love does not parade itself. Love is not anxious to impress, says the Phillips version. Love is not pretentious. I think that helps us to get a concept of what God’s telling us.

Well, all of us have a problem, I think, with wanting to brag. To be a win bag, to let everyone know about ourselves, or about someone close to us, or about something that’s happened to us that’s more significant than anybody else. Our efforts to build ourselves up tend to make others feel bad. Seems to me being boastful is kind of the flip side of being envious. Envious doesn’t want someone else to have something that they have. You’d rather have it. And boastful makes folks want what you have. Kind of makes folks sorry they’re not as good as you are, or at least tries to make folks feel that way. You say, well, I don’t have a problem with that. Well, I want to ask you to remind yourself the next time someone’s telling you a story about something that’s happened to them.

And you catch yourself if you can just hardly wait till they get finished so you can tell a better one. I think that’s our tendency. So I can tell them what happened with me or my circumstances or my surroundings. Bragging wants other folks to feel that you are superior. And ladies and gentlemen, love doesn’t do that. Because love’s notion is that others need to be put above me. That’s the way love acts. And I have a passage here that I’d like for us to turn to to show you what was happening in the church at Corinth. You remember we said early on in this series that 1 Corinthians 13 is set in a context, the immediate context of which starts in chapter 12 of 1 Corinthians and takes us all the way through the end of chapter 14.

And the discussion centers around the spiritual gifts that God gave to the church and how God wanted them to function. I want you to look at chapter 14 and verse 26 and kind of get the picture of what was happening in the church at Corinth. How is it then, brethren? Whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edifying. What it appears to me was happening in the church there is different ones would receive a gift from the Spirit, maybe to sing a song. Every one of you has a psalm. Or a teaching, one would receive a revelation that needed to be taught to the audience. A tongue, one would be able to speak in a foreign language without having studied it.

Or a revelation, something directly from God that needs to be told. Or an interpretation, the ability to take a language and interpret what the person was saying. But when you read on through the chapter here in chapter 14, it appears that folks were almost vying with each other over these gifts to see who could get the most attention. And so he later on says, they are to speak one at a time, in turn. None of this, one jumping up and another jumping up, and then we have this confusion going on. God is not the author of confusion. Let things be done decently and in order.

But you see, even when it came to spiritual gifts, people could be braggards. It’s like, let me show you what I can do. Love doesn’t act that way. But certainly there was an awful lot of that in the church at Corinth. Turn back to chapter 3 and look at look at with me again at what was going on in that church. You see, I would like to reiterate what we said at the beginning. God placed this marvelous description of how love acts in the midst of a mess. To show that even in the worst of situations, love can shine forth like something beautiful from God Himself. Chapter 3, verse 1, brethren, I cannot speak to you as to spiritual people, but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ.

I fed you with milk and not with solid food, for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you’re still not able. For are you are still carnal, for where there is envy and strife and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men? For when one says, and please excuse the overemphasis is I am of Paul. Paul taught me. And maybe even Paul baptized me. And another says, Well, I am of Apollos, and he’s right here in our midst teaching us. He’s the greatest teacher and the most eloquent man that’s ever been, and I belong to his group. And Paul says, I can’t talk to you like grown-ups. You’re just babies still. And then he says, love doesn’t act that way.

And you know one of the dangers for preachers? Leaders in congregations is that people in the congregation begin to place that person up on a pedestal and begin following him. God help us. May God help every preacher and every leader in God’s church not to allow such a thing. And every member of every congregation to remember that our allegiance is to Jesus Christ, our master, and that’s all. Lest we divide up into parties. And then, like the church at Corinth, brag about it. God give me the strength that every time I have the opportunity to introduce the topic of conversation, may it always be turned to Jesus Christ, my Lord. Jesus didn’t brag. Let me show you one instance of our beloved master and how he handled himself as he was on earth.

It’s in John the 12th chapter where I would like to direct your attention. And verse 49. And this is just illustrative of how Jesus dealt with situations in which he, the master of the universe, certainly could have portrayed himself as the great one.

Verse 49 says, For I have not spoken of my own authority. But the Father who sent me gave me a command what I should say and what I should speak. And I know that his command is everlasting life. Therefore, whatever I speak, just as the Father has told me, so I speak.

2. Love Is Not Puffed Up

What love does is it tries to impress God with the importance of others, not itself. Well, the next expression in 1 Corinthians 13 is love is not puffed up. So one version says, love is not puffed up. Let me read you some other versions of that particular expression. Love is not arrogant. Love is not conceited. Love is not vain glorious. It’s not inflated with pride.

But let me tell you what the word is in the Greek language this time. It’s from the word fusio, which means to blow up. And the old timey bellows where they would puff it out like this, and then there’d be plenty of wind in it to blow, is the idea that that word comes from. So you can just think of this fellow as being puffed up with himself. There was a great conductor composer named Moscani. And he wrote an opera and dedicated it to himself. And here is how it reads to myself, with distinguished esteem and unalterable satisfaction. I say it’s a commentary on the misery of the man’s soul. And there are some folks who have that kind of notion about themselves, but love doesn’t act that way.

You think there was any of that at the church at Corinth? Well, let’s back up to chapter 4 and let me show you. Do you think there’s ever any of that among Christians today? Brothers and sisters, sometimes we think we have the answer so clear in our mind, we’re not going to listen to anybody. We already know. And sometimes we come across to folks who are not Christians as we try to help them see some of the things we believe we understand. It’s entirely possible for us to come across with such a notion that, well, here I am, God’s gift to you to explain everything I know. Love doesn’t act that way. Look in the fourth chapter in verse 18. Now, some of you are puffed up as though I were not coming to you, but I will come to you shortly, if the Lord wills, and I will know not the word of those who are puffed up, but the power.

Then back up to verse 6. Now, these things, brethren, I have figurative figuratively transferred to myself and Apollos for your sakes that you may learn in us not to think beyond what is written. My, let me emphasize that, brothers and sisters. People begin to think beyond what is written. And then begin to think, my, I know a lot. And Paul is writing to remind them you are not to think beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up on behalf of one against the other. For who makes you differ from another? And what do you have that you did not receive? Now, if you did indeed receive it, why do you glory as if you had not received it? It seems to me what the Lord is telling us here is that love recognizes everything we have is from God.

And who are we anyway? But miserable bags of dust. We’re all sinners. And were it not for God’s grace and mercy, we would none of us have any hope. Love is not puffed up. Turn to chapter 8 and notice something else. Verse 1. Now, concerning things offered to idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up. But love edifies. Now, would you listen to me a minute? And let me give you a practical example. In the day this book was written, to the city of Corinth, where it was filled with idolatry, many of those Christians had come out of idolatry, and they now realized that idols are nothing. But some of them didn’t understand that fully. Some of them thought if you ate meat that had been offered in sacrifice to those idols, then you were, in a sense, offering to that idol, and therefore you were still worshiping that idol.

So you shouldn’t eat that meat. Other brothers knew very well you can eat whatever you want. Doesn’t matter where it came from, just eat it. And so get the picture. Here’s the brother that understands you can eat any kind of meat, it’s all right. God lets you receive it. And he looks over at that pitiful brother who doesn’t know any better. And he says, What in the world are you talking about? That’s ridiculous. Go ahead and eat that meat. Everybody knows there’s nothing wrong with that meat. And so he puts the brother to shame, makes him feel about that high, as he in his knowledge is going to tell him about it. I think that’s exactly what was happening at Corinth. He says, now, concerning things offered to idols, we know that we all have knowledge.

Knowledge puffs up. You know, one of the dangers, Christians, the more you learn about God’s word, and the more you come to understand the depths of its principles. One of the dangers for all of us in that category, you and me together, is the more you know, the more you begin to think, well, I know a good bit here. I know a lot. Now I want to tell you something my mom and dad said to me many times. You don’t know anything until you begin to know how little you know. And I remember hearing Dad joke a little bit about what a PhD was. You know what a PhD is. That’s a fellow that’s learned more and more about less and less until he knows almost everything about almost nothing.

And I’m not belittling those fellows because I are one. But I hope I recognize that the more you learn about something, you know where you come to, you come to know there’s so much more to learn. You don’t know anything. And isn’t that the attitude we should have? Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies. Love is always trying to figure out a way to build somebody else up, not myself. Well, I don’t know how you feel about that, but to me that is so powerful.

And so we could go back to the book of Proverbs. I’m not going to ask you to turn there, but let me read you a few things that says the fear of the Lord is to hate evil, pride, and arrogance. When pride cometh, then cometh shame. Only with pride is contention. Had you ever thought about this? Humility never started a fight. But pride starts a lot of them. And this one you know very well. Pride goes before destruction. And chapter 29, verse 23 said, A man’s pride shall bring him love. You see, going back to 1 Corinthians 13. Love is not big-headed. Love is big hearted. And so God says, love does not parade itself, is not puffed up. May God help us to find that quality in our own lives.

And to be like Jesus Christ our Lord. Who being on an equality with God considered not that equality a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, took upon himself the form of a man, and became a servant, even unto the death of the cross. My what a master. Love is not puffed up.

3. Love Does Not Behave Rudely

And then verse 5. Love does not behave rudely. I thought for a long time that didn’t belong there. Here we’ve talked about these great and grand concepts, the idea of long suffering and kindness and the lack of envy and not being boastful and not puffed up, and then we come along and say it’s not rude. Doesn’t that seem like kind of a minor thing, stuck here in the midst of all this? Well, it seems like it to me sometimes when I think about that. And the word there is shapeless or unformed. Here are some other translations. Love does not act unbecomingly. Love has good manners. I’ll tell you, Philip’s translation of this particular section of scripture is wonderful, I think. Love has good manners. I think that is precisely what the Lord is talking about.

This great concept of divine love includes the idea that love does not act in a rude fashion. Poor manners and rudeness are saying this. I don’t love you because I could care less what affects you. I’m going to do what I like, whether you like it or not. I mentioned last night that we had a study Friday night with several couples about married life. And we went to this passage first. Because 1 Corinthians 13, ladies and gentlemen, will fix your home and my home. If we will start acting at home the way this passage teaches, it’ll fix everything. Love never fails. And one of the things we do the worst at home, it seems to me, is giving good manners. That’s where we let it all down, isn’t it?

And let it all hang out, and we all get rude with each other. And I brought that up to those couples, and everybody just kind of smiled. You know, and kind of yeah, we know about that. And then I asked for some examples of rudeness. You fill in the blanks. How is it at your house? And husbands and wives, don’t we know exactly what it is that we do that irritates the other one? I guarantee you we know what those things are. And sometimes don’t we do them just because I see folks looking at each other and kind of I think that’s the way it is a lot of times. Husbands, if you know that when you’re sitting at the table with guests in your house, that it really irritates your wife to slurp your soup, or to burp, or to do other kinds of things that she doesn’t believe are acceptable, and you go right ahead and do that.

That’s not the way love acts. Because what that says is, I don’t care what you think, I’m thinking about what I want to do, and I’m going to do it. And love doesn’t act that way. Undisciplined behavior that doesn’t care about the responses of others is not the way love acts. Love is never rude because it is always lost in its concern over how what I do affects somebody else. I want you to think, you see Luke 7 down there? Let’s go there for just a moment. Here was Jesus at a dinner at the house of a Pharisee. And during dinner, as they were sitting down to eat, verse 37 says, A woman in the city who was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at the table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of flagrant, fragrant oil, and stood at his feet behind him weeping, and she began to wash his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head, and she kissed his feet and anointed them with the fragrant oil.

And Jesus spoke right up.

He said, Simon, I have something to say to you. There was a certain creditor who had two debtors, one owed 500 denary, the other 50, and when they had nothing with which to repay, he freely forgave them both. Tell me, therefore, which of them will love him more? And so instead of bringing this precious woman who was a sinner, embarrassment, Jesus did something to bring out the importance of what she was doing. Wouldn’t you love it, brother or sister in Christ? If all of us could develop the capacity to take every situation in which we find ourselves and do something in that situation to build, to edify. But what we do so many times is we say tacky things. And we instead of helping, we kind of cut the situation up and make it worse.

Could I remind us all that love does not behave rudely? And the next time at your house, when you start to do something and you know the way it’s going to affect somebody else, and it’s going to come across the wrong way, would you and I stop ourselves and say, love doesn’t act that way. And I want to fulfill God’s law in my life. Could I give you one other illustration of that? It seems to me that sometimes Christians act in ways to other people who are not Christians and maybe who don’t understand things. That’s almost rude, also. I think we need to be more careful. And I prayed to God to help me not be so judgmental and quick with other people. But to try to, as my Lord Jesus, bring them from where they are to where they need to be best I can with an attitude of gentleness and concern to help bring them from that stage to this stage.

I’ve seen sometimes Christians in the face of people who are smoking, for example. Just be almost rude. How dare you do such a thing as that? And blow your smoke in my face. Well, I know how irritating that is. And how sometimes it can get away with us. But may we be reminded in whatever circumstance we find ourselves Christians, love doesn’t act rudely. Only love can save us from the bitter sneer of envy, from the ridiculous swagger of boasting, from the inner tendency to be so inflated with our own importance that we’re rude to anybody else, contemptuous of others’ feelings, but folks, love can save us from all of that if we understand how much God loved us and how much he wants us to love others.

4. Love Does Not Seek Its Own

Well, I want to look briefly at one more tonight back in 1 Corinthians 13. The next property of love described there is that love is not self-seeking. Love does not seek its own, the passage says. Let me read you some other translations of that. Love does not insist on having its own way. Love does not pursue selfish advantage. Love is not interested only in himself. In a churchyard in Old England in the village of Lymington, here is a tombstone. Here lies a miser who lived for himself and cared for nothing but gathering wealth. Now, where he is or how he fares, nobody knows. And nobody cares. In contrast, there’s a plain tombstone in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London with the following inscription. Sacred to the memory of General Charles George Gordon, who at all times and everywhere gave his strength to the weak, his substance to the poor, his sympathy to the suffering, and his heart to God.

What a contrast. Two epitaphs, distinct and opposite. One shows lovelessness, the other shows love. And I’m telling you, brother and sister, the only people who contribute in this world are those who love the way God loves us. And love does not seek its own. In fact, one had said, if we could cure selfishness, we will have replanted the Garden of Eden. The portrait of love given in this passage is a portrait of Jesus Christ my Lord. And we’ll not take the time to talk about all these illustrations. But think what God did for us. Think what Jesus Christ did for us. They emptied themselves for us, not because we deserved it. And then think of something closer to home. Would you turn with me to Philippians chapter 2?

And would that my epitaph and yours could read something like this. Philippians 2, 19. But I trust in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you shortly, that I also may be encouraged when I know your state. For I have no one like-minded who will sincerely care for your state. For all seek their own and not the things which are of Christ Jesus. But you know his proven character that as a son with his father, he served with me in the gospel.

Timothy portrayed that character so beautifully. Because Paul could say, I’m going to send him to you, brethren, and when he gets there, I know what he’s going to do. He’s going to care for your state, not his own.

Conclusion

May God help us, Christians, as we try to portray the character of God Himself, to make it part of our lives to reflect these things we’ve talked about tonight that are aspects of love as God would have it. And I thank you for your wonderful attention. And I’d ask you now to get your song books, because in just a moment we’re going to sing a closing song with this thought in mind. There may be someone here tonight who’s not yet a Christian. While we’ve not talked this evening about the things you need to do to become a Christian, if you love God, the Bible says you will keep his commandments, 1 John chapter 5. And what God sent his son to tell us was that his son came to give his life, that we might have life.

John the third chapter, verse 16 says, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. Do you believe that you can have everlasting life? But you must be willing to let that faith lead you to act. You need to turn from your sin, repentance, and you need to be baptized into Christ for the remission of your sins. If you’re ready to do that, we don’t want to leave without giving you that opportunity tonight. And if there’s a Christian who’s fallen away, won’t you come while we stand? And as we stand