Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through 1 Corinthians 13, emphasizing that love is not selfish or easily angered. He highlights the importance of selflessness in love, illustrating how true love prioritizes the needs of others over personal desires. The sermon encourages believers to reflect on their own actions and attitudes, urging them to embody Christ-like love by sacrificing for others and maintaining a calm demeanor in the face of challenges.
Welcome and Housekeeping
Thank you for listening to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Sermon Audio. For more information, please visit our website, pgbcronda.com, or visit on all social media platforms. Thank you, Cody.
If you have your Bibles, we'll be in 1 Corinthians chapter 13. We've been preaching on love, and a couple weeks ago we talked about love is not envious. I'm envious of people that can play.
I'm envious of people that can sing. And so that was a blessing to me. I hate that the Lord didn't bless me with the ability to play and sing. One line of that song that was just said, I'll scribble it down in my notes. In my past is your presence.
And man, to think about how the Lord has changed us, and how the Lord has worked in our heart, it is a blessing to know that our past has been changed by the God's goodness to us.
If you have a child that wants to be dismissed to Children's Church, they can be dismissed at this time. 1 Corinthians 13 is where we're at. We've been preaching through what is love over the last couple of weeks.
And if you're new today or you haven't been here, that's fine. We're going to pick up where we're at.
But we began talking about how Christ said that to be loved is to show love, and how the world is going to know that we're his disciples by how we love one another. And so love was the key component that Jesus talked about. And then Paul, in 1 Corinthians 13,
began by saying the prominent thing is love, and without love we're nothing. And then he began talking about what love is. Love is patient. Love is kind. And now these last couple of weeks we've been talking about what love is not.
Love is not envious and boastful and not arrogant and rude. And we'll pick up in verse 5 today.
If you have your Bibles open, they'll be on the screen as well. Let's stand out of honor and reading of God's Word. Let's you stretch your legs for just a moment. The Bible says in verse 1, we'll read the first five verses.
If I speak with human or angelic tongues, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clinging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and have all faith so that I can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
If I give away all my possessions and I give over my body in order to boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant,
Prayer and Worship Reflection
is not rude, is not self-seeking, and is not irritable. Father, we love you.
We thank you for what you've done. Thank you for this blessing music that we got to worship with you today. Lord, my heart has been touched.
My heart has been stirred for your goodness and what you've done for us. I pray that you'd be with the reading and preaching of your Word. In your name we pray. Amen. You may be seated.
This morning we're talking about two things that hit hard to us as human beings, but we are all selfish creatures. We are in our humanity, in the way God has created us. We, by the fall,
are selfish in our own needs. I want you to think about Jesus and His disciples this morning. There were two brothers that came to Jesus. One was named James and one was named John.
They were called the Sons of Thunder, right? They wanted to get things done. They came to Jesus in Mark chapter 10, and in Mark chapter 10, verse 37, this is what they asked Jesus. They said they answered in a hymn, and they said,
allow us to sit at your right hand and your left hand when you come to glory. I mean, think about this. These are the disciples. They're humans just like us, and Jesus is walking on this world, and He's healing people. He's feeding people.
Amazing things are happening. Crowds of 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 people are following Him, and they come and say, Jesus, you're going to be a pretty big deal. Can we sit on your right and left hand? We're brothers.
We're the Sons of Thunder, right? We're going to do some things. And in this moment, Jesus answered them, rebuked them, and says, you don't know what you're asking.
There's going to be a baptism that I'm going to go through, which is death, and you're going to go through the same thing. But this is what happened with the other disciples in verse 41. When the 10 other disciples heard this, they began to be indignant with James and John.
So there was selfishness that was shown by James and John, but there was also anger and resentment that was shown from the other disciples as well.
And that really, that story begins to resonate in our heart because how often is it in our life where someone will get something that we wanted, and we think we deserve it? How often is it that we get angry when something happens to someone else because it didn't happen to us?
When we don't understand what other things may have happened to them in order for them to get that.
Insight on Selfishness
In January 25th of 1988, the year I was born, I was not born yet, Time Magazine provided an insight on selfishness and not sharing.
Anyone in here ever have a kid that didn't like to share? One of the first words of a child is mind, right?
Anybody can relate with me? Anybody testify a little bit? We want to say mind, that's mind. I don't want to share. I've got three kids, and Hudson's favorite word is, no, Jade, this is mind. Right? He wants it to be his.
And in January of this, this article was written, and it was speaking about the introduction, and some kids in here won't even know what this is, of a video cassette recorder.
Some older people may know what that is, and the article said that the company made a crucial mistake because while Sony had kept what was called the Betamax technology mostly to itself,
JVC, a Japanese inventor of the VHS format, shared its secret with a multitude of firms.
Basically allowed everything to be a public market. And as a result, the market was overwhelmed by the volume of VHS machines that were produced. And it drastically undercut Sony's market of share, and its first year of VHS production, Sony lost 40% of its market share.
And by 1987, it had only controlled 10% of the market. Now, I want you to understand this. Everyone had jumped onto the VHS bandwagon, but the beta format was a much better product than the VHS.
It was a better producing quality of content. But because it was easily shared, everyone jumped on the VHS side of it. And Time Magazine said this in 1988, beta machines to the consumer electric graveyard because of the cutthroat business of everyone else sharing.
In the world that we live in, we understand that sharing in the open market has greatly increased our technological advances.
When things are opened and people share things, and people are not selfish and hold things to themselves, big and great things happen.
And oftentimes, we as a church and we as church members keep things to ourselves because we don't want to hurt ourselves and we don't want to hurt other people. As a biblical counselor and understanding what the Bible says about community and growing together,
I understand the value of opening up. I understand the value of being vulnerable and sitting in a room with someone and saying, I struggle with this area. I need help in this area.
How can you help me? And I see the value in not bonding things up and bounding things up in our life. Because when we can sit in a room and we can say, I'm going to be vulnerable and I'm not going to be selfish. I'm going to help out in these things.
Ultimately, we are able to share the gospel with other people.
We need to go out, as the Bible says, and share and not hoard this wonderful gift of the gospel to ourselves.
And so, let's begin in our notes because I know I don't have a lot of time, so I'm going to speed through this a little bit. But the first thing is this. Love is not selfish.
This is the fifth negative statement that we're going to look at. And it basically says that love does not insist on its own way. Today, church, we live in an age of social media where ultimately we are the center of the universe. Everything is about me, myself, and I.
How many likes can I get? How many shares can I get? How many followers can I get? And this didn't start with us. This started with Adam and Eve.
Adam and Eve's Selfishness
Adam and Eve in the garden said, I really like what God has taken from me. He's withholding these things from me. And so, I'm going to indulge in self instead of indulging what God has for me. And they ultimately replaced God with themselves.
And 6,000 years later, as Bertie was asking me this morning, how old is the earth? 6,000 years later, according to the biblical account,
we are still in the same problem that Adam and Eve is. We replace God with self.
This type of all-consuming focus takes our focus off of Christ's love and puts it on our love.
Puts it on what we think is right and appropriate. If Jesus would have had this thought, church, there would be no cross. There would be no redemption of humanity. There would be no redeeming, wonderful music that we just had this morning because Jesus is worth it all.
Jesus showed this type of love before you and me ever loved him. The Bible says that he loves first, not us.
We don't deserve this type of love. In Romans 15, 3, to continue on with what Cody was saying, for even Christ did not please himself. Oh, it's the contrary. As it is written, the insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.
If Jesus would have been selfish, church, this morning, we would be on an ocean of sin in a boat without sails and without oars. We would be lost,
spinning in an ocean of our own sin and our own making without any way to get out of that sinful ocean.
And Christ said, I'm going to come into this world and I'm going to show you a radical love that you've never experienced before and it's the only type of love that you'll ever see, which is a selfless love.
Paul said that he didn't have his own desires. I'll put a couple of verses in your notes. Romans, I'm sorry, 1 Corinthians 10, 33 says this, just as I also try to please everyone in everything, not seeking my own benefit, but the benefit of many, why? So that they may be saved.
You see, selfishness leads to others not hearing the gospel, but selflessness allows others to come to know Jesus.
He says in chapter one, I'm sorry, chapter nine, verse 19, although I am free and free to do everything else and I'm not a slave, I have made myself a slave to everyone in order to win more people.
Church, when we begin to be selfless, we begin to see others come to know Christ. And he said in 2 Corinthians 12, verse 14 and 15,
look, I am ready to come to you this third time, but I will not burden you since I am not seeking what is yours but you.
For children all not to save up their parents, but parents for their children, I will most gladly spend to be spent for you in this church. If I love you more, I am loved less.
He is simply saying, I'm gonna give as much as I can possibly give. You see, this was a hard, hard example for the church at Corinth. The church at Corinth was a very selfish church that was very consumed with their gifts and their talents and their abilities.
And they lived in their own rights and their own freedoms, and they could not understand this sacrificial way of living. And Paul was saying, if you are going to have love, you must sacrifice. Oftentimes as selfish people, we don't understand the life of Christ. We look at Christ and we say,
who has this type of merciful love? Who gives their life for someone who is going to harm them, who is gonna hurt them, who is going to take the needs of someone else over their own needs?
Love That Serves Others
The love that we get from Christ doesn't ask, what can you do for me? It asks, what can I do for you? And church, if we're going to have love the way Christ had love, it is no longer what benefits me, but it's what benefits other people. So it's love is self-sacrificing.
Ultimately, it's the opposite of the statement. It is love is self-sacrificing. The greatest enemy of any Christian is a selfish heart. It is saying that you are better than anything else. It is a me, myself, and I in the heart that is consumed with only you. Acts 11, 22 says this,
for if he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit, and of faith, and large numbers of people were added to the church daily. That verse is about a man named Barnabas.
I spoke about Barnabas a couple weeks ago in some of my introductory thoughts, and I want us to understand that Barnabas was one of the church forefathers.
And he was sent from the church to go check on Paul and help Paul out.
And when he got there, he says that he saw Paul, he was a good man, he was full of the Holy Spirit, and the large numbers of the people were added to the Lord daily. You see, Barnabas could have easily been selfish.
He could have came and said, I want that ministry. I want what the Lord is doing in Paul's life. I want to have large numbers.
I want to see people come to know Christ the way Paul is. But he saw Paul, and he said that Paul was full of the Holy Spirit. He had the qualities of Galatians 5. He was full of love and patience and goodness and kindness.
The first time we hear of Barnabas is in Acts chapter 4. It says this in 36, Joseph,
a Levite from Cyprus by birth, and one of the apostles called Barnabas, which is translated the son of encouragement. This is the first thing we hear about Barnabas. You ready? He sold a field that he owned and brought the money and laid it at his apostles' feet. Robert Law said,
love has a giving impulse. Church, this morning, I want you to understand that God is not a taker, God is a giver.
And if we are going to be like Christ, we must have this mindset that we are going to give and we are going to serve and we are going to sacrifice for what Christ has done for us. Barnabas wasn't a throne seeker. He was a foot washer.
Barnabas was not a person who was limiting people, but he was a person that was encouraging other people. And Barnabas loved by giving, not by getting.
We need to get to this place in our life. We need to get to the place where great things happen when we don't care who gets the credit.
We don't care if it's the lowest person on the totem pole or the biggest person that's to come to know Christ.
This past week, this past week, Friday, we drove five and a half hours down to Georgia and we were at a conference down there and I got to speak Saturday morning and one of the guys made this statement. He was talking about Stephen.
He was talking about one of the very first deacons in the New Testament.
And he said, Stephen could have had the ability to withstand the abuse and the hurt and the heartache that was going to come his way. He said, but Stephen endured the persecution and while people were throwing stones at him,
he looked up and he said, Father, forgive them. Lord, they don't know what they're doing. It's the only time in Scripture that we have where Jesus is mentioned standing at the right hand of God, welcoming his saint home
because Stephen didn't care who got the credit. And if you read just a couple more verses, Paul, who was Saul, was standing right there holding the coats of Stephen. You see, Stephen didn't care
what was going to happen to him. All he cared about was the gospel going forth. And in that moment, I truly believe that because Saul saw what was happening to Stephen, he saw the selflessness of Stephen, he saw Stephen forgiving the ones that were killing him,
was the beginning of the transformation of Saul's life because Stephen didn't care who got the credit. Stephen just wanted the gospel to be pushed forward. Stephen just wanted
Finding Your Purpose
the glory of God to be pushed forward. So I want you to ask yourself this morning, church, where does the church need your help and how can you help this morning? We all have a job to do.
We all have a purpose that God has given us in the part of the body of believers and we must ask ourself, am I just going to be the, and I say this so,
I don't even mean it when I say this, but Saul, Stephen was just an ordinary guy who was serving an extraordinary God who just said, whatever God wants me to do, I'm going to do.
We've got to get to a place where we understand we're just ordinary people serving an extraordinary God and saying, God, what do you need me to do? So love is not selfish, but love is also not easily angered.
And this one can get to me a little bit, right? We, as a dad, as a redhead, I read this and I can be irritable, I can be easily angered. I just spent 10, 11 hours in a vehicle with three kids in the vehicle.
Do I have any parent here who can testify a little bit of how you can be easily angered when you've got three kids in a car going up and down a mountain when it's dark and there's foggy out
and they're trying to ask questions and they're trying to do these things and they're bickering and all of a sudden you just lose your temper and you're like, man, that wasn't Christ-like.
Maybe it's a little testimony time for me. Maybe confession time for you guys. In the course of our life, church, we're going to deal with some extremely hard things. The Bible says that you are promised one thing as a believer in Christ.
You are promised suffering for Christ. He says, but hey, don't worry. I've overcome the world but you're going to suffer. You're going to go through hard times and in that testing of our ability we will be angered.
Doesn't mean we won't ever get angry. It doesn't mean that Paul is saying here you should never get angry. There is a righteous and a controlled anger that we learn from Scripture. Jesus in Matthew 21. We'll look at Jesus' life first.
The crowds were saying that this is a prophet from Nazareth of Galilee and Jesus went into the temple and when he got into the temple he began to throw out the buying and the selling. He overturned the money changers and the chairs of those that were selling doves.
Jesus was angry angry because his house had turned into a den of thieves.
He was angry because people were misusing God's house in a way that should not be used.
And James, his half-brother said it like this in James 119. My dear brothers and sisters, understand this. Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. See, he saw Jesus' life.
He saw what Jesus did there and he understood that it was a righteous anger that was a reason for him to be angry because of the cause of Christ. We have to ask ourselves, am I getting angry because someone is misusing Scripture?
Am I getting angry because someone is singing a heretical song in church? Am I getting angry because someone is doing something that I don't like personally or is it something that Christ is being dishonored in? You see, uncontrolled, sinful anger is incompatible with the biblical view of love.
We are quick to be angry because we think of our needs rather than the needs of others. Right? When something doesn't go my way, it's easy for me to get angry.
But when things go my way, I'm happy. When anger rules, get this church, small problems become big explosions that blow our life into pieces. When anger rules our life, small problems become big explosions that blow our life into pieces. We are to be spirit-controlled and self-controlled.
As the Bible says in Galatians 5, 22 and 23, if we take time and a hundred times to read it, and in Galatians 19 and 20, he goes and he talks about how when it's controlled, anger, it's for the work of Christ.
But when it's out of control, it's for the work of the flesh and the devil. And as you examine yourself this morning, I want you to imagine for a moment,
I was told this past week or two weeks ago when Mark came back from serving up in the mountains and helping out people get power, Roy came up to him and he said,
did they have any Pepsis up there? And he said, oh, there's Roy. I thought I was looking over here beside Barbara. I didn't see you. He said, did they have any Pepsis? And Mark said, no, they only had Cokes. This is what Roy told me. He said, without a Pepsi in the morning, you can't get your day going.
And so I want you to imagine for a moment, you pick up your can of Pepsi and all of a sudden it slips out of your hand. It falls on the ground and it gets shook up and it begins to
maybe bulge just a little bit and you go, I really need my Pepsi to get going. And so you pop the top and it just explodes everywhere. Has that ever happened to anybody? Just Pepsi's everywhere. It's disgusting. You're sticky. You got to get cleaned up.
What Comes Out When Shaken
You see, the reason why Pepsi came out of that can was because Pepsi was in that can. It's a parable you could say.
Whatever's inside of us is going to come out when we're shaken up. When the world comes and issues come in our life and we get shook up and we get to the point where we're about to explode and someone opens the top on us, whatever comes out is what was inside. God.
It's a simple fact of nature. It's a simple fact of life that if Christ is inside of us, when the pop top of our can is popped, Christ is going to come out.
If the world and the flesh and the devil is inside of us, that's what's going to come out. So we need to begin to examine ourself and ask yourself, when you are shaken, more times than not, what comes out?
What is exposed to the world of who you truly are will eventually come out?
Because love, a biblical view of love should be calm and slow to anger. Loving Christians are not irritated with little disagreements.
They begin to address what we've already talked about. They begin to be patient. Love suffers long. Proverbs 15, 18 says, a hot-tempered person stirs up conflict, but a slow anger
calms the strife. It's a story I read this past week of Hudson Taylor being slow to anger and irritation.
In China, he was standing on a large river bank and Hudson Taylor was standing there waiting for a boat, a ferry, to come and get him and in his day, he had come accustomed to the land and so he dressed like a Chinese person.
He wanted to look the part. He wanted to feel the part. And when he was standing there, a wealthy Chinese man came up behind him and pushed him and knocked him into the mud at the side of the bank.
Horrified by what was seen, the boat man who watched this experience happen, he refused to allow the wealthy businessman to board the boat because Taylor had been there first and called for his service. By Chinese customs,
it was always that you were to speak, you were to treat a guest or a foreigner with respect. But because Hudson Taylor was dressed like one of them, he didn't know that. And Hudson Taylor
stood up and the foreigner saw that he just was dressed as a Chinese man and he realized what he had done and he instantaneously began to apologize and ask for forgiveness and he said, Sir, I'm sorry. I didn't know you were a foreigner.
I didn't know that you were someone that was here visiting. Hudson Taylor had a time where he could react impulsively with anger or he could act with what Christ had done for him.
Hudson Taylor's Forgiveness
And instead, he graciously forgave the man and asked the man to join him on this boat ride. And in this moment,
Hudson Taylor had an opportunity to witness to him and share Christ's love. He responded to the provoking situation with the more excellent way.
And oftentimes, we would get upset and we would prefer ourselves over someone else and in that situation, instead of turning it back to the Lord,
we turn it on ourselves and how we have been hurt and how this is not fair for me. And Christ says, no, no, the love of Christ is calm and slow to anger and prefers someone else over themselves.
As Terry comes and plays, I want to give one final illustration this morning as we get ready for our response time. But in the reign of King Frederick William III of Prussia, he found himself in trouble many years ago.
As Terry said, there are wars all across the world. There are constantly wars. There's rumor of wars as the Bible says. And in this specific time of the nation, war had become very costly for this nation.
They were trying to build the nation and they were seriously short of finances. He said, I cannot disappoint my people and surrender to the enemy. It is an unthinkable task. After careful reflection, he decided to ask the women of Prussia to bring their jewelry,
their gold, and their silver to be melted down for the sake of the country.
And for each ornament that they received, he determined to exchange a decorated bronze or iron symbol of his gratitude.
And each decoration would be inscribed on the back of that ornament, I gave gold for iron, 1813.
He said, this is the only thing I can think of. If this doesn't work, we'll have to surrender.
And this is by his account. He said, the response was overwhelming. Even more important, these women prized their gifts from the king even higher than their formal jewelry.
for this reason, the course was clear, the decorations were proof that they had sacrificed for the king,
that they had done a service to the king, that they had given up their mother's jewelry that they had inherited. They had given up their grandmother's necklace that was so valuable to them for the sake of their country. And indeed, it became unfashionable!
became unfashionable for women to wear any type of jewelry because there was no jewelry. And so what it turned into was an establishment of the order of the iron cross.
And members of this establishment that had donated their jewelry would receive an iron cross and that would be their decoration that they would wear and it would show their country that I sacrificed
Sacrifice for King Jesus
for my king. Church, have we sacrificed for our king? when it comes to King Jesus who exchanged heaven for an earthly cross. Who exchanged the glory
of God in heaven who sat at the right hand of the Father who spoke the world into existence who sit in heaven and ruled all the universe. He said, God, I'll exchange what I have for an earthly cross.
I'll exchange the glory of God his son the three in one the trinity I'm going to exchange that for an earthly cross. And often times Christ looks at us and he says what are you sacrificing?
What's the sacrifice that you're giving me in return? I'm not saying that you have to sacrifice but love sacrifices. What are we doing for the sake of the gospel this morning church? And how are we responding today with our sacrificial way of living? Maybe it's that you just are holding things to yourself.
Maybe there's unburdened sin that someone's hurt you. Maybe there's something that's been done in your life that you just can't get over that you need to turn over to the Lord.
Or maybe it's like I was a couple of years ago when I was a teenager and I was angry and I couldn't get over my anger and I had to bring my anger to the Lord and say God I cannot live in this anger bitterness anymore.
It was literally killing me as an 18 year old boy. Couldn't sleep I couldn't eat I couldn't function because the anger that was in my life was bitter and hard and bigger than anything else in my life.
Maybe it's the anger this morning that you're here for a specific reason and maybe it's this morning that you said you know Pastor I don't know the Lord. I haven't I've never trusted him as my Savior.
Maybe you've trusted him and you just need to come and recommit your life to the Lord and say God I need to live for you more than I ever have.
Whatever it may be you respond as you see fit whether it's in your pew whether you come down front it's between you and the Lord. Lord we love you this morning.
Lord as we pray for your wisdom and your guidance Lord we pray that your will be done in this service. God you are so good to us. God you gave us your only son to exchange heaven for an earthly wooden beat up cross to be mocked and crucified
God oftentimes we're I'm number one in the line unfaithful in what you've done for us. God I pray that you'll help us this morning to look to the cross and look to what you've done and evaluate our life and say God help me to be less selfish and more for you. For it's in your name we pray. Amen.
Thank you again for taking your time to listen to the sermon audio of Pleasant Grove. Please subscribe to get our latest sermons each week.
Auto-generated transcript · 5,390 words. May contain errors. Select a timestamp to play from that moment.
More from What is Love? Love is not...
View all
What is Love? The Preeminence Of Love - Week 10
What is Love? the Permanence of Love - Week 9
What is Love? Love In All Things - Week 8
What is Love? Love is not... - Week 7
What is Love? Love is not... - Week 5
What is Love? Love is not... - Week 4
Listen to this sermon