Spiritual Gifts and Love

There are few chapters in the Bible that are more misunderstood than 1 Corinthians chapter 13. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love, I am become as a sounding brass or a tinkling 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 and 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 and have not love, it profiteth me nothing. Love suffereth long and is kind.

Love envieth not. Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, does not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never fails.

But whether there be prophecies, they shall be done away. Whether there be tongues, they shall cease. Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child.

But when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known.

And now abide us faith, hope, love, these three. But the greatest of these is love. I say it again, there are a few chapters in the Bible that have been more misinterpreted and twisted than this one, primarily because it has been taken out of its setting.

Now if you want to prove anything from the Bible, you can do it if you'll take the passages out of their setting. People have made this a sentimental hymn to love. It's not a sentimental hymn to love.

In this particular chapter, Paul is dealing with love, and if you want to make it into a hymn, you may do so. But what he's doing is trying to solve the problems in the Corinthian church. This chapter was never written for unsaved people.

Perhaps you've attended weddings where this has been read, and the participants in the wedding are not Christian people. I'm sure they love each other, we trust that they do, but this kind of a love is not something that is natural or worked up or romantic or sentimental. It's far deeper than that.

This chapter was not written as a sentimental hymn to love, it was written to solve the problems in a local church. And if any church had problems, it was the Corinthian church, as we're going to see. In chapter 12, Paul has explained the gifts.

In the Corinthian church, they were greatly gifted. He says that they came behind in no gift. They really were gifted people.

But the problem was, these gifts were being used not as tools to build the church, they were being used as weapons to fight each other, and they were being used as toys to play with. They were acting like a bunch of children. Just as children say, well, my bicycle is better than your bicycle, they were saying, my gift is better than your gift.

In chapter 12, Paul explains the gifts, and then he explains the body. He says the church is a body. We belong to each other, and we affect each other, and we need each other.

Now he's saying this, the circulatory system for the body of Christ is love. The thing that makes the body of Christ function the way it's supposed to function in harmony is love. What he's saying in chapter 13 in one simple sentence is this.

The nature of love is such that it is absolutely essential if we are going to use our spiritual gifts. Now this is the third church that I have pastored, and I have preached in hundreds of churches around this nation. I have counseled with many pastors, I have had correspondence with many pastors.

Most churches are the same. The faces are different, and the names are different, but basically most churches are the same. In every church there is someone who has gifts, and he's recognized as having gifts, but something's wrong when he uses these gifts.

Instead of things going well, they get fouled up. Instead of the work going forward, it sort of stands still, or worse yet, goes backwards. Now the Corinthian church had a lot of problems that they were facing.

It was a divided church, they had immorality in the church, their public meetings were confusing, people were standing up talking at the same time, there was jealousy in the church, there was envy in the church, and worst of all, there was competition. I'm for Paul, and I'm for Apollos, and I'm for Cephas, and I'm for Christ, and I have this gift and you don't have that gift. My body does not compete with itself.

Whenever a part of my body decides to become independent and competitive, I'm fixed. And so it is with the body of Christ. And so Paul is saying the circulatory system for the body of Christ is love.

Spiritual gifts must be exercised with love because of the nature of love. He doesn't say faith, he doesn't even say hope, he says love. Now in order to enforce this truth, namely that spiritual gifts must be exercised in love, in this chapter Paul gives to us the three basic qualities of love.

And Paul is saying to me and to you, if you understand the qualities of love, you'll know why love is essential for the operation of spiritual gifts. It comes as a shock to some people to realize that a church with many gifts and many gifted people can be a problem church. The church at Corinth was.

Now let me give you the entire chapter in a nutshell, and then we'll take it piece by piece. In verses 1, 2, and 3, he gives us the first quality of love. He says love is enriching.

When love is at work in your life, it enriches you. Did you notice the word that he uses? A tinkling symbol. I am nothing.

I am nothing. It prophetess means nothing. He's talking in financial terms.

Paul is saying in verses 1, 2, and 3, that the first quality of love is this love is enriching. And if I am exercising spiritual gifts without love, I am robbing myself. Now in verses 4 through 7, he says love is edifying.

That's the second quality of love, it's edifying. He says if I am exercising my spiritual gifts without love, I am not building up the church. Notice now, two robberies have taken place.

In verses 1, 2, and 3, if I'm not ministering in love, I rob myself. It prophetess means nothing. Paul doesn't say it cheapens the gift, he says you're cheapening yourself.

In verses 4 through 7, Paul says I'm robbing the church. If I'm not ministering my gift in love, I rob the church. Because these gifts are to edify the church, and love always builds up.

Then in the last part of the chapter, verses 8 through 13, he gives us the third quality of love. Love is enduring. He said love lasts.

These gifts are only temporary and partial, but love lasts forever because God is love. This means when you minister in love, God is ministering. Love is enriching, verses 1, 2, and 3. Love is edifying, verses 4 through 7, and verses 8 through 13, love is enduring.

In other words, if I minister and use my gifts, whatever they may be, and don't do so in love, three robberies are taking place. I'm robbing myself, that's verses 1, 2, and 3. I'm robbing the church, that's verses 4 through 7. And I'm robbing God because what I should do in love would last forever and bring glory to his name. So to go back over it again, I want you to have the total picture here.

In verses 1, 2, and 3, he says I'm robbing myself of personal growth if I don't have love. In verses 4 through 7, he says I'm robbing the church of spiritual grace. I'm not edifying the church.

And then in verses 8 through 13, he says I'm robbing the Lord of eternal glory because the work that we do in love lasts forever. Because love has that quality, love is enduring. Now this being the total picture of the chapter, let's take it section by section and see what it means for our hearts.

Remember what he's saying. He's saying that if we minister our gifts apart from love, we aren't going to be doing the work of God as we should. Love is essential for the ministering of spiritual gifts.

Verses 1, 2, and 3, love is enriching. Now he selects five gifts. Number one, tongues.

Though I speak with the tongues of man and even of angels. Paul is not suggesting here that there are two kinds of tongues, tongues of man and tongues of angels. It's a hypothetical clause here.

Paul is saying even if I spoke with the tongues of men and of angels. Because you see tongues was the one gift in Corinth that people bragged about. So there's the gift of tongues.

In verse 2, there's the gift of prophecy. Prophecy you will recall was the ability to communicate spiritual truth immediately from God. The church in Corinth, they did not open up to Romans chapter 6 or Ephesians chapter 3. The Holy Spirit of God had prophets in the church and the Holy Spirit would give the message to the prophets and the prophets would stand and communicate the message.

So here's the gift of tongues and the gift of prophecy. Thirdly, there's the gift of knowledge. If I had all knowledge.

Now Paul didn't. It's hypothetical. Paul did not have all knowledge.

He said even if I did have all knowledge and I understood all the mysteries of God. Then there's a fourth gift, all faith. He's not talking about saving faith.

He had that particular blessing. He's talking about the gift of faith, that special miraculous faith that enables people to do amazing things. He said if I have the gift of tongues and if I have the gift of prophecy and knowledge and even the gift of faith and then the gift of giving.

The gift of giving to the very point of giving my body to be burned. If I give all that I possess. Now here are five very wonderful gifts and people in the Corinthian church had these five gifts.

Paul said if I exercise these gifts as great as they are without love, something happens down inside. I rob myself of personal growth. Notice these verbs now.

Notice this description. He said if I have these gifts of tongues and I speak in tongues but I don't do it with love. He said it's just so much noise.

Now nobody goes around collecting noise. I seriously doubt that anybody has in his stereo record collection four albums of noise. I've heard some records that would be very close to this.

But nobody goes into discount records and says I'd like to have an eight track tape of noise. You can just stick your head out the window and hear all the noise you want to hear. Nobody wants to hear noise.

You want to hear harmony and beauty and music. Paul says tongues without love turn a very wonderful thing, my tongue, into a clanging cymbal. Bang, bang, bang.

Now if you invite me to come to hear a cymbal solo, I won't be there. I don't mind an occasional cymbal and a symphony. They hit it at the right time.

He says let's take the gift of prophecy. Now prophecy and tongues and knowledge often went together. You see, Paul's not talking about human knowledge.

He's not talking about the knowledge of arithmetic or music or architecture or painting. We aren't going to be dumber in heaven than we are here. He tells us we're going to know even as we are known.

He's not talking about recognition or thinking. He's talking about the gift of knowledge. It's really very unfortunate that in his beautiful devotional book, The Greatest Thing in the World, Henry Drummond forgot that Paul was talking about spiritual gifts.

It's also unfortunate that our beloved founder, Mr. D.L. Moody, fell so in love with that devotional approach to 1 Corinthians 13, he encouraged Mr. Drummond to publish it. It's a beautiful book if you understand what Paul's talking about. If you don't, it will lead you astray.

Here's the gift of knowledge and prophecy and tongues. They went together. Suppose this is a meeting of the Corinthian church.

Thank God it isn't, but suppose that this is a meeting of the Corinthian church and the Holy Spirit wants to communicate a spiritual truth to us. A prophet stands up and he may speak in tongues. God gives to him, I'm talking about the first century now, God gives to him the immediate knowledge that he needs.

He has the gift of knowledge. He has the gift of prophecy. He proclaims this knowledge and he may do it in a tongue.

Now we're going to have occasion to examine the gift of tongues in detail next Sunday evening, the Lord willing. Then somebody else led by the Holy Spirit would stand up and interpret what was said. Now these three gifts would go together, knowledge, prophecy, and tongues, but Paul says tongues without love, nothing.

Prophecy without love, nothing. Knowledge without love, nothing. Giving without love, it profits me nothing.

Now this is a tremendous truth. I want you to get a hold of it now. If I exercise my spiritual gift and I don't do it in love, I tear myself down.

And the tragedy in the churches today is that many people think they are really growing when they're throwing their weight around and they're exercising their gift but not in love. And they go home from the meeting and say, my, I really grew tonight. No, no you didn't.

You just thought you did. We rob ourselves of personal spiritual growth when we try to serve the Lord without love. Now this explains why some people can seem to be very effective in the service of the Lord and then one day the whole thing collapses.

See, true love doesn't work that way. When a person is ministering his spiritual gift in love, love for the Lord and love for the people that he's ministering to, it doesn't become hollow and empty and cheap, it gets richer and richer and richer. I should grow as I minister my spiritual gift.

You should grow as you minister your spiritual gift. And if we discover we are not growing inwardly, it may be an evidence that we're not ministering in love. Now the only way to minister in love is in the power of the Holy Spirit.

What's the fruit of the Spirit? Love. That means when we serve the Lord using our gift, not in the power of the Holy Spirit, we tear ourselves down. Now we will not spend time on this, but I'll just drop this into your heart for your consideration.

This is why it is a very dangerous thing to try to serve the Lord in the energy of the flesh. For a while it may look very successful and very profitable, but I'll guarantee one of these days that house built on the sand will collapse. Now in verses 4-7 he deals with the second quality of love.

Love is enriching. If I minister in love, I'll build myself up. Nothing wrong with that.

Love is edifying. If I minister in love, I build the church up. Now these particular qualities of love that he lists here in verses 4-7, he tells us what love is like.

I think that the illustration of a spectrum is beautiful. I think Henry Drummond uses this illustration, so do other commentators. But a white light comes into a prism and breaks up into the spectrum of beauty.

He says let's take the white light of God's love. God is love, and this holy white light shines through Jesus Christ. He is the prism, and it just pans out into that beautiful rainbow spectrum of colors, and here they are.

But the thing Mr. Drummond misses, and I want to emphasize, is why Paul chose these descriptions of love. You know why? Each of these descriptions touches upon a problem in the Corinthian church. He's saying, oh, you have people who can speak in tongues, but what is it doing to the church? Oh, you have people with a gift of knowledge.

Back in chapter 8, he says, knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. You know, Bible study is not for the purpose of a big head. If your study of the Word of God and your growing in your knowledge of the Word of God makes you proud, there's something wrong.

The more we study the Word of God, the humbler we ought to feel. Oh, he says, you have people who can perform miracles. You have people with gifts of healing and so forth.

Ah, but he said, without love, what are they doing to the church? Now, let's take these characteristics here. The purpose of God's gift is to build up the church. He says this back in chapter 12, verse 7. But the manifestation of the Spirit, that means the gifts of the Spirit, is given to every man to profit.

Another translation would be, the gifts of the Spirit are given to each man for the benefit of the whole church. Now, if you stop at verse 3 and say, I'll build up myself, that's selfish. You have to move on to verses 4 through 7 and say, I'm going to help build up the church.

Now, lay hold of this. When a gift is ministered in love, it's for the good of other people. And I don't think that Paul teaches anywhere that I'm going to take my spiritual gift and use it privately for my own good and ignore my brothers and sisters in Christ.

The gift is given to edify the whole church. We're going to notice the next time we're together in chapter 14, the Lord willing, how often he uses the word edify. For example, verse 3, he that prophesieth speaketh unto men to edification.

Down in verse 5, he talks about the contrast between tongues and prophecy. He wants that the church should receive edifying. Down in verse 12, he says, even so ye, forasmuch as ye are zealous of spiritual gifts, nothing wrong with that, seek that ye may excel to the edifying of the church.

You can read all the way through chapter 14 and over and over again, you find the word edify, edify, edify. Now, the word edify means to build up. In verses 4 through 7, he says love is edifying.

When gifts are exercised in love, it builds up the church. It heals broken hearts and it helps people with their problems. Keep a marker in 1 Corinthians 13 and turn quickly to Ephesians 4. We have the very same idea in Ephesians chapter 4. We have referred to this chapter before.

He's talking about the work of the Lord. Verse 11, and God gave to the church some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of the ministry, unto the edifying of the body of Christ. My responsibility as a pastor teacher is so to perfect you, so to build you, that you do your work and build up the body.

God never expected the pastor to do everything in the church. I feel sorry for those churches where the pastor has to do everything. When he's gone, who's going to do it? The pastor's responsibility is to build people up through preaching and teaching and loving and praying and disciplining and counseling, so that they in turn use their gifts to build up the body of Christ.

Now, how is this done? Well, if you look at verse 15, but speaking the truth in love may grow up unto him. You see, down in verse 16, he repeats this. He talks about every part of the body, verse 16, making increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.

In other words, the atmosphere in which the body grows is love. This is why when you find a church where people are exercising their gifts, but not in love, in rivalry, in competition, in jealousy, in comparison, you don't have spiritual growth. You have babies.

You have a playpen with people hitting each other with their toys. Tragic. Now, go back to 1 Corinthians 13, and as we read these verses, think of the Corinthian church.

He's saying, you don't need more gifts. You don't need better gifts. What you need to do is exercise your gift in love because love is edifying.

Well, verse 4, love suffers long and is kind. What was going on in the Corinthian church? They could hardly wait to talk. They'd have a meeting, and somebody would jump up and give a psalm, and before he was through, somebody else would jump up and say, I've got something to say, and there was confusion.

He says, now where there's love, there's patience. I confess to you that one thing I have to pray about and work on is the ability to listen and keep my mouth shut. God gave me two ears and one mouth.

That should tell me something. But you see, love is patient and kind. Love doesn't interrupt.

Love doesn't jump up and shove somebody aside. Love is patient and kind. Love envies not.

That's all they did in the Corinthian church. I'm a hand. Ah, but I'm a foot.

I'm an eye. Oh, but I'm an ear. And they were envying one another for their different gifts.

Now, no Christian ought to envy another Christian. Don't ever look in the mirror and say, well, why can't I teach? Why can't I preach? Why don't I have this gift or that gift? Just find out what gift God's given you, or gift and exercise them. The hand cannot say to the foot, I have no need of these.

And so love does not envy. If you're exercising your gift in love, it's not to knock somebody else down. One thing that burdens my heart in our evangelical world today is that some people think the only way to make themselves look good is by making somebody else look bad.

And I get so tired of reading the editorials and the journalistic productions that just knock people down. Love doesn't envy. Love is kind.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't expose sin. But even that should be done in love, speaking the truth in love. Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.

Some night when you can't sleep, go through 1 Corinthians and mark every time you find the phrase puffed up, puffed up, puffed up. That's why Paul warned them about the leaven that was in their church. Leaven, yeast, puffed up.

And they were puffed up. Oh, they were a proud people. But love, he said, is not puffed up.

Love doesn't behave itself unseemly. Yeah, but some of their people were getting drunk at the Lord's table. And some of them were living in fornication.

Love doesn't behave itself unseemly. Love is courteous. Now, sometimes courtesy is missing among God's people.

I'm going to meddle for a little while. I think that one of the hardest ministries in the local church is the ministry of ushering. You know why? God's people have no interest in doing what the usher wants them to do.

You know why we have ushers at Moody Church? And I thank God for our ushers at Moody Church. You know why we have them? Because the Bible says, let all things be done decently and in order. That's why we have ushers.

We're obeying the Bible. The trouble is we don't always obey the usher. And there are always those people who have to come in late.

Now, sometimes you can't help it. Parking is a problem. But the usher says, would you wait just a moment? The choir is singing.

I've been coming to this church for 20 years. And push right past him and walk right in front of everybody. My Bible says love has courtesy.

I'd like to recommend you listen to the ushers because they're God's servants for keeping order in God's house. And my Bible says let all things be done decently and in order. The tragedy is some of the people who need to hear this aren't here tonight.

So would you pass it along? I'd appreciate that. Love seeketh not his own. Now, in the Corinthian church, they were all seeking what they wanted.

He said love doesn't seek his own. Love seeks to help somebody else. Love is not easily provoked.

Oh, they were suing each other. They were dragging each other down to the law court and suing each other. He said, aren't you better off losing that money and maintaining your testimony? You can always get more money.

You can't get your testimony back. It's kind of hard. Love is not easily provoked.

Love thinketh no evil. Love doesn't rejoice in iniquity but rejoices in the truth. The people in Corinth, when they heard some juicy piece of gospel about some Christian, they believed it.

I've learned a long time ago, don't believe it. My Bible says in the mouth of two or three witnesses let every word be established. And somebody comes to you and says, if you heard this, you say, are there witnesses to this? No, but I heard it's a very high source.

Really? How high? You see, in the Corinthian church, they wanted, listen, they wanted to believe the worst about people because if they believed the worst about people, it made them look better. You know, I've never felt that if one of my brothers or sisters in Christ gets into sin, it makes me any better because we affect each other. If my thumb gets punctured with a thorn and I get a fester in my thumb, the elbow shouldn't say, well, sure, I'm better than he is.

It may get up there. So you can go through this now. Love beareth all things.

Believeth all things. It doesn't mean you believe everything you hear. It means you want to believe the best in people.

I'd love to spend six months on this subject. I need it. Why is it we're so quick to believe the worst about people and so slow to believe the best about people? Why is it that we as evangelical Christians, when we meet somebody for the first time, instantly look for some point of difference instead of some point of agreement? I have tried to practice in recent years, and the Lord knows how much I've failed, that when I meet some other Christian, I want to find some point of agreement, not some point of difference.

And so love rejoices not in iniquity. It beareth all things. It believeth all things.

It hopes all things. It endures all things. You see, he's talking to the problems of the Corinthian church.

They were guilty of these things. You know why? You know why there's division and dissension and competition and envy and drunkenness and immorality? It's because you are exercising your spiritual gifts, but you don't have love. So love is edifying.

Now he reaches his conclusion here, and there are some technicalities here I'm going to save for next Sunday evening as we discuss the subject of tongues. Verses 8 through 13, love is enduring. This is why love is so essential in our church.

You see, the gifts that Paul discusses here were partial and temporary. He says here, now, love is never going to end. Love is never going to fail, because God is love.

There was love before there was tongues. There was love before there was a world. God is love.

And when you're exercising your gifts in love, God is doing it, and if God does it, it's going to last. This is Paul's way of saying what John said, He that doeth the will of God abideth forever. Oh, I think of sermons that I have preached, but I haven't preached them in love.

They aren't going to last. I think of visits I have made, but I didn't make them in love. They just aren't going to last.

So you see, when I don't function in love, I rob myself. I don't grow, and I rob the church. The church doesn't grow, and I rob God.

He doesn't get glory. You know why God saved you? To give Him glory. Three times in Ephesians chapter 1, we're saved to the praise of the glory of His grace, to the praise of His glory, to the praise of His glory.

If Jesus came back tonight and took us all up to heaven, He's taking us there, not just to rescue us from this awful world, but that He might reveal His glory. But every time I function without love, I rob God of glory. Every time we minister in love, it adds that much more glory, so that when the church is gathered together, the body is complete, it will bring so much more glory to God.

I'm ashamed of myself for years of ministry when I didn't know this. So love is essential because love is enduring. God is love.

Now, He takes here the three gifts that went together. He doesn't talk about sacrifice anymore. He doesn't talk about faith.

He talks about tongues and knowledge and prophecy. They went together. And these were the gifts, especially tongues, that the church in Corinth was so infatuated with.

Paul said, I want you to know something. Prophecy is someday going to end. He means the gift of prophecy.

He said there's going to come a time when we'll no longer need the gift of prophecy. There's going to come a time when we're no longer going to need the gift of knowledge. Now, He's not talking about knowing.

We're going to know up in heaven. We shall know as we are known. He's talking about the gift of knowledge, where the Holy Spirit gives to a person spiritual knowledge immediately.

Nobody in Moody Church gets spiritual knowledge immediately. You get your spiritual knowledge immediately. It is mediated to you through the Word of God.

He says a day is going to come when we won't need prophecy anymore and we're not going to need knowledge anymore. And He says a day is going to come when tongues are going to cease. Now, the verb that He uses for prophecy and knowledge is different from the verb He uses for tongues.

We'll go into detail on this, the Lord willing, next time we're together. But He says this, prophecy is going to be ended. Knowledge is going to be ended.

These gifts will be put out of commission. Tongues are of themselves going to cease. That's the verb He uses, because tongues are a sign gift.

We're going to see over in 1 Corinthians 14 where Paul says tongues are for a sign. And when a certain thing happens, we won't need tongues anymore. Tongues will just cease of themselves.

This raises the interesting question, can they come back? We'll have occasion to talk about that, the Lord willing, next Sunday evening. But the point we're making now is this. Paul says you're so infatuated with tongues.

You're so infatuated with knowledge. Look, do you realize that all of these things are temporary and partial? Nobody knows everything. No preacher knows everything.

Sometimes we act like we do, but we don't. We know in part, and we prophesy in part, speaking about the early church. Then he moves into this whole matter of maturity.

Now, once again, we'll go into the technicalities of this, the Lord willing, next time we're together. He said, do you remember when you were a little child? Certainly. By the way, it's a mark you're getting older when you can remember farther and farther back.

It's frightening. He said, when I was a child, I spoke like a child. And I got a little older, and I understood like a child.

I got a little older, I started to think like a child. He said, when I became a man, I put away childish things. It's an awkward translation.

What he's really saying is this. By the time you become a man, you have put away childish things. He doesn't mean that at one point in your life, all of a sudden, you put away childish things.

He said, over the course of the years, as you grow up, you give up certain childish things. You don't say, Dad, Dad, anymore. I hope you don't.

You don't say to your wife, hubby wants a glass of milk. You don't sit in a high chair. You see, we laugh at these things because they're so out of place.

Now he's saying to these Corinthians, and when you read chapter 14, he hits you just like this. He said, don't be children. Grow up.

Grow up. Love is enduring. Now, get mature.

When you become a mature Christian, you don't need to talk like a baby or think like a child or behave like a child. There's a maturity in the Christian life because love is enduring. Now, where does this leave us tonight? Well, you're saved.

I'm saved. We have spiritual gifts. We must exercise these gifts in love.

When we exercise these gifts in love, we grow individually. The church grows collectively, and God gets the glory because love is enduring, and it puts an enduring quality into our ministry. When we use our gifts in love, we can listen to the other person's suggestions.

We don't have to be right all the time. When we use our gifts in love, we help other people use their gifts. To change the image, if I may, love is not only the circulatory system of the body of Christ.

Love is the lubrication of the machinery of life. I can always tell when I'm not exercising my gifts in love, I create problems instead of solving them. I can always tell when I'm not exercising my gifts in love because I make it harder for somebody else to exercise his gifts.

And folks have to come to me and say, Pastor, do you realize what you did? Oh, that's my problem. I've got to learn to love. Now, this love is not something that we work up or manufacture.

It's one of the most beautiful things in the world. When you got saved, God gave you the gift of love. Did you know that? Romans chapter 5, verse 5, The love of God is shed abroad in our heart by his Holy Spirit.

You already have the gift of love. All you have to do is cultivate it. And if you're going to be singing or running a business meeting or running a committee meeting or helping to dredge the lake up at the Antioch or whatever you may be doing, however you're exercising your gifts, when that love flows through, you know what happens? You grow.

And everybody else grows. They say, you know, I like to be around that fella because when I'm with him, I'm a bigger person. I'm a better person.

And then the church grows and then God gets the glory. Which leads me to one final observation. Be careful as you evaluate ministry.

Now, there are some people who are spiritual detectives. And they can always tell who's spiritual, who's carnal. I gave up on that a long time ago.

Paul wrote to the Corinthians and he said, Now, judge nothing before the time until the Lord shall come. Doesn't mean if somebody's walking opposite of the word of God, we don't know it. What it means is don't go around judging motives.

Don't say, well, the only reason he does that is because we don't know. But my final word is this. Be very cautious in evaluating somebody else's ministry.

If you and I will just function evaluating our own ministry, if every man will prove his own gift and do his own work and carry his own burden in love, we're all going to just grow together and build together and God's going to be glorified. The greatest need in Christian work today is love. And it's such a beautiful experience.

You see, when you love and you exercise your gift, you can disagree without being disagreeable. When you love and exercise your gift, you can say, I'm sorry. When you exercise a gift in love, you can say, You know, your idea is better than my idea.

It's a beautiful experience to live in the atmosphere of love. Gracious Father, we're thankful for the gift of love in Christ. Not only did he incarnate love in himself, but he put love in our hearts.

Now, Lord, forgive us when we have been unloving toward one another. Forgive us when we have exercised our spiritual gift for self-glory to get our own way. Help us, Heavenly Father, please help us to experience in a deeper way the love of the Lord Jesus in our hearts and through our lives.

I pray for any who may be here who don't know this wonderful love, who have never trusted the Savior. Lord, speak to their hearts. And Father, if some of us have things in our hearts that are hindering the love of God, cleanse them away.

Make us clean. Cause the body to function in a healthy, happy way in the harmony of love for Jesus' sake. Amen.