Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through 1 Corinthians 13:8-12, emphasizing the permanence of love compared to temporary gifts and knowledge. He explains that while spiritual gifts may fade, love remains eternal and is essential for true discipleship. The practical application encourages the congregation to cultivate a Christ-like love that transcends worldly measures of success and to seek deeper relationships with God and one another.
Welcome and Announcements
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. Amen. Thank you for that choir.
Thank you for singing out church during our time of Congregationals. It's a blessing to hear you sing. If you've got a child that wants to be dismissed to Children's Church, that's at this time now. We'd make that available for you.
If you have your Bibles, we're going to be in 1 Corinthians 13. We'll be in 8 through 12, 4 of the last 5 verses. We've got this week and one more week of what is love.
As I said last week, this has been a challenging message for me, and I think my mic's going to do that again this week. So if it does it again, I'm going to transfer this green mic.
But we are just so excited about preaching through this and preaching through what is love and how Paul tells us what love is.
And so if you have your Bibles there, 1 Corinthians 13, verses 8 through 12, we'll stand and read what the Bible says about what love is.
It begins by saying, Love never ends, but as far as prophecies, they will come to an end.
And for tongues, they will cease, and as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke as a child.
I thought like a child, and I reasoned like a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now, we see only a reflection as a mirror.
But then, face to face, now I know in part, but then will I know fully, as I am fully known. Lord, we love you for this day.
We thank you for what you've given us. We thank you for your blessings. We thank you this morning for allowing us to be able to assemble freely and be able to preach your word. I pray that your word be lifted high this morning. We love you. In your name we pray. Amen.
You may be seated. Today, we're talking about the permanence of love.
We have talked through the command that Jesus gave us, the love as Christ loved others and gave his life for it, how he told the world that they will know you're my disciples by how you love one another,
not by how much we give, not by how much we do, but by how much we love. We began talking through this series of the prominence of love, love, love, without love. We are nothing. We're like a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.
Understanding Love's Nature
That's just annoying. And then we began to talk through what love is and what love is not. And then the actions of love. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes in all things, and endures all things.
Then Paul transitions here and he says that there are some permanence, that things in life that are permanent.
There are also things that are temporary and things that don't make sense when we are in it in the moment. And so as I was thinking through this, my mind went to my young teenage life 15, 16, 17 years ago.
I know for some of you, you think, man, young teenage 15 years ago. Yeah, I know. But as I was going through high school and going through my life as a teenager, we had this, we didn't have Netflix,
we didn't have Prime Video. We weren't able to have the luxury of just sitting at home and flipping through channels and trying to find what we were going to watch.
But when I was a kid, this advent of this phenomenon really in the 1980s began to come about about purchasing VHS players in our homes. How many of you had a VHS? At this time, this wonderful thing called Blockbuster opened up.
Blockbuster was the end-all, be-all of where you were going to be in your life. They were founded in a little small town called Dallas, Texas in 1985.
This video rental industry took shape by creating a huge new income stream for film distribution people.
Before this, it was just movies and you would go to a movie and you would have to wait until it came out on TV. And this was the bridging of the gap between the two.
Over the years, this is what I want us to understand, and over the years, Blockbuster became an industry leader growing in a size of over 9,000 stores.
Around the world, they have revenues of $5.9 billion at its peak in 2004.
Many of that money was from me. In the UK alone, it had over 4,000 stores. The blue and yellow signage of Blockbuster high on the streets was a sign of anticipation when my dad would say, kids, get in the car. We're heading to Blockbuster.
And we'd go through and we'd pick up all these different movie boxes and we'd decide on what we were going to do. And then if we were really lucky that day, he would say, all right, kids, pick out a snack for the movie.
And I mean, we were like on cloud nine living the life. We didn't have a lot of these extras growing up. And so we'd go through.
And of course, for me, I would grab the M&Ms. Some of you may have grabbed the bag of popcorn or the sour candy or the sweet candy.
And then as I transitioned into college, something went completely wrong with Blockbuster.
The turn of the century in the 2000s, Blockbuster still dominated the video and the DVD rental. But internet speeds began to improve. This carried the potential of radically altering how we consume forms of media.
The idea of streaming a feature-length movie was now a reality because internet was able to do this. Some had the foresight to be able to transition and change, but others did not.
While Netflix practically evolved its business model, it began, and some of you may not remember this, Netflix began with a DVD order program.
You used to go online and you would select the DVD and they would mail it to your house. And then after you finished watching it, you would mail it back. And Blockbuster was slow to respond.
The company did not develop its own streaming service at the beginning and eventually called on.
But Netflix was popular and began to take over the market. Added the competitive challenges of operating the cost of running a brick-and-mortar store, Blockbuster began to lose millions and millions of dollars by the day. By the late 2000s, it was clear that Blockbuster's days were numbered.
Blockbuster went into bankruptcy in 2010, and today there is one store still remaining open in Oregon where you can go and it's really just a museum of old things, but they've kept it open. You see, if you would have told me as a middle school and high schooler, when you get to college,
Blockbuster will be no more, I would have probably laughed you out of the room. I can count on maybe one hand how many times on a Friday night I wasn't at the Blockbuster on Jake Alexander.
I could probably tell you how many times that me and my buddies weren't there scouring through the movies, scouring through what we were going to watch, scouring through what we were going to hang out with because that was
Temporary Gifts and Their Purpose
life as a teenager, and all of a sudden we get to college and it has completely changed. And as I thought through that, I thought through Paul telling the church at Corinth,
prophecies, they're going to come to an end. The things that you once knew, they're going to go away when the perfect comes. The partial is going to end, and one day, like you spoke as a child, now you're going to become an adult. Paul is transitioning to the Corinth church and saying,
the heart of the matter is that gifts and these things in life will be gone, but there is a greater that is going to remain.
And the greater thing that we need to understand is the love that remains that Christ has given us.
And so today is more of a theological message, talking through some of these aspects, and I'm going to try not to go super deep for you, but I want us to understand some things because in verse 8 it
says, but as for prophecies, they will come to an end, and for tongues, they will cease, and as for knowledge, it will also come to an end. We have to understand that gifts are temporary.
We've all been given gifts, talents, and abilities from the Lord, and you can understand this in just age. We have Buford, who's here, who's 93,
and Edward, who just had a birthday as well last week. Both of them are in their 90s, and they cannot do the things that they used to do when they were 50 and 60 and 40 years old. You understand this as you get older.
You can't do the things that you once did. The gifts that you once had are no longer there. This past week, I was telling the Deacon yesterday, I coached a football game on Friday morning.
I coached the middle school boys game at my wife's school, and then I helped her coach the middle school girls game, and then I helped coach the high school girls game, and then they asked me to ref the
high school boys game, and then they asked me to play in the staff student alumni game.
I didn't go to the school, but every once in a while I'll sub, and I helped coach, and so I said, sure, I'll play in the flag football game. And so I'm out there, and I'm playing, and I'm a big guy.
I used to play on the line, and so I'm throwing these high school boys around, and we're having a great time.
And I got home, and I told Allie, I said, this is the first year that I've played that I didn't get hurt. Normally I blow a knee out, or I hurt an ankle,
and so I was like, man, this is awesome. But then I sat down, and my body started to rest, and I realized that I'm not as young as I used to be. My back started hurting.
I had to take some ibuprofen. My knee started hurting. My knee is now continually popping every time I sit down. And so now I'm like, man, the gifts I once had, they're temporary. I don't have them anymore.
I'm not able to run like I used to. I'm not able to hang with these guys that are younger than me, and part of that, I'm out of shape, and I understand that. But the theology behind this is this.
I believe the gifts that Paul was talking about ended when the apostles passed away. I believe they ended or ceased to exist when the last apostle passed away.
But he said in this encouraging thought, as these gifts pass away, I'm going to give you something that's greater.
I'm going to give you love to be carried on. Remember the words of Jesus. They will know you're my disciples, not by how many gifts you have, not by how great you are in the political realm, not by how much status you have in life, but they will know that you're my disciples
because of the love that you have, not the gifts and wonders. You see, the gifts and signs were given for a purpose, and then they ceased to exist. You see, we don't understand it.
My wife always gets on to me when I do that. My mind's sort of moving a little faster than what I do. Don't hear what I'm not saying, church. Miracles happen every day.
Right now, Darlene, I've just got a report, she is sitting on the side of her bed, and she's recovering, and those are the prayers that God gives us as miracles. My buddy Nathan, who just three or four weeks ago was on his deathbed, was about to pass away, we were planning his funeral,
God intervened and saw fit to heal him in a miracle. That is not what I'm saying. Miracles happen every day, but they're from God, not from man.
These were men that were doing great things, and Paul was saying they are going to pass away. There are three times in recorded history that humans were used by God to do miracles.
And I want us to fully understand this in the next couple of minutes. Moses and Joshua were given a 70-year period where, as we just taught in Good News Club this last week, Moses parted the Red Sea, and they walked across on dry land, and Joshua did some amazing things, and
God used those two men to do some miraculous things for the children of Israel. But after 70 years, no one picked up the mantle from Joshua and continued to do signs and miracles. And then we fast forward in creation history to Elijah and Elisha.
Elijah did some amazing, mighty things. I was there on the hill where he called down fire from heaven and slaughtered all of Baal's false gods and was there, and it's an amazing sight to see where they pulled the water from and the amount of
faith that it took for Elijah to stand up and perform these miracles, and then Elijah took over. But we never hear of anyone taking over after Elisha. It ceased to exist after 70 years.
And then there was another 70-year period where Jesus and his disciples performed miracles and did amazing things, and then they abruptly stopped.
You see, I want us to understand that tongues and signs and gifts were given to unbelievers to help them believe. They were never given to strengthen the church.
They were temporary. In church, as we dissect this passage and we begin to look through this passage, we begin to understand that those things have ceased, but God says that love doesn't cease. Love continues on.
Love continues to go forward to strengthen the church, to improve the church, to help the church to be a witness in the community, and we must use that gift of love that we have been given.
The Impermanence of Knowledge
It continues on in verses 9 and 10 to say that the gifts are partial. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will soon come to an end. So what does this mean? God's, these gifts are partial. It simply means that God is complete,
and we are limited. Church, how many of you can identify with me today and say that you are limited in your abilities to do everything? Right?
We, we, I wish I had the mind of some of these theologians that I believe, that I read after. I wish I had the, the, the gift to just have energy.
I was in the older class before Sunday school started, and, and all the little kids were running down the hallway,
Hampton and, and, and Holt and Hank and Hudson, the four H's, they're, they're running down the hallway, and they had energy, and I said, don't you wish you could just bottle up some of that energy and just infuse
it in this room? And they're like, yeah, wish that we could have some of that. We, we're not perfect. We don't have completeness. We, we get older. Our bodies begin to fade, and there's partiality in our life.
Romans says it like this in Romans chapter 11. For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Has anyone been the counselor of God? And who has ever given to God? And for him, he should repay. You see, we live in a sin-filled,
sin-cursed world. Our minds are corrupt. How could we ever comprehend the perfectness of God? How could we ever comprehend the, the completeness of who God is outside of his scripture?
You see, Paul said that there is going to be a time when the perfect comes and the partial goes away. And as you begin to read through this and try to figure out,
as, as I am, I'm a guy who likes to study prophecy and study different things. I want to know like, okay, when are these things going to happen? Me and Terry have some great conversations about this.
But, but you begin to ask yourself, what does this mean? How, what does it mean the perfect comes? Some people have said that the perfect coming would be the completed scriptures.
Although I believe in God's completed word and we will have the inerrant, infallible word of God before us that we don't need anything else added to scripture, this would not have made sense to the Corinthian church. When the completed scripture would come, the partial will go away.
No, what he's saying here is something different. Some have interpreted this to mean that this is the rapture or the second coming. When the perfect comes, when the rapture comes and the second coming of Jesus comes, that's when it's all going to be known.
And yes, there's a part of that that's true, but when the rapture comes, all of prophecy is not fulfilled. There is another portion of prophecy which is the millennial kingdom.
So we have to understand that when he says here the perfect is going to come, he is talking about the perfect eternal state that we get to stand before our heavenly father.
We get to stand before the king of kings and the Lord of lords, Jesus Christ himself and we get to understand that that is the perfect state.
When we see him face to face, the presence of Christ, the perfection of Christ, the glory of Christ there standing beside his father and saying, welcome home my children. And we get to stand before him face to face.
Church, I long for that day. I long for the day that I get to stand face to face to my redeemer who died on the cross for my sins, who took away my sins, who redeemed my life so that I can stand before you
today. When I was a five-year-old boy and I trusted in Jesus and I have the honor and the privilege of standing up here and proclaiming Christ and I have the honor and privilege of raising my children in
the nurture and admonition of the Lord, I get to say that one day I'm going to stand before him.
When I look back on my life and I see the trials that Logan was just talking about, the tribulations that we go through, I get to look back and say, it was worth it all to trust in Jesus. It was worth it all to know that he was the, is the redeemer.
And I get to stand before him and say, it is worth it all.
Church, I hope that we can say that together. I hope that we can look one day and be able to stand together in glory and say, God, thank you.
The Perfect State of Christ
As we look and we think about Thanksgiving this morning, as we look and we think about what he's done for us, we get to know that he is the perfect state. And then in verse 11 and 12, we get to the third part of the message. Gifts are elementary.
Verse 11 and 12, it says, when I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child and I reasoned like a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things.
See, Paul was illustrating a picture of what perfection will look like one day. He uses this picture of a glass darkly and a reflection and a mirror. He says, but one day we will be face to face. Life on this earth is often shown as an immature event.
Look at the very first humans that ever lived, Adam and Eve.
God put them in a garden in a perfect place and a place that was designed for them to commune with Him on a daily, hourly, second basis. And in that moment they were immature. They were as children who doubted their Heavenly Father and sinned in that moment.
And church, as we look through all throughout creation history, we look all throughout what we have done in our life, we see the immature moments where we, as we talked about this morning, where we haven't trusted God in
our Sunday school class, where the times where we didn't give thanks back to God for what He's done for us.
As we think through those things, we think through the immaturity that often we have as Christians.
You see, I fully believe when Paul was saying this, when I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish
things. See, you have to understand a little bit about the Jewish tradition of what Paul was saying here. Have any of you ever heard of a bar mitzvah before? A couple people.
Okay, a bar mitzvah is a wonderful celebration of, I believe it's a 15-year-old birthday where this 15-year-old daughter or son, they come before their father and their mother and their grandparents and it's a beautiful celebration.
We sort of do this at 16-year-olds and the Hispanic tradition does a quinceanera, so there's a little bit of tradition throughout history of this, but in a Jewish tradition, in a Jewish household, when a child turns
15 years old, they have their bar mitzvah, they stand up before their family, they have this wonderful celebration and their rabbi will come out,
the rabbi will have a little word and this is what the rabbi says, he looks at the child and he says,
today you are a child, but right now you are a man. It's a momentary, singular event in their life where they go from childhood to adulthood.
They go from understanding as a child to now you are an adult and you will be honored as an adult, you will be expected to be an adult, you will be living your life as you are an adult in this single instance.
This is the correlation to what happens when Paul was saying there, I was once a child, I spoke as a child, I thought as a child, I reasoned as a child,
but in that instant when Christ came into my life, I began to think as a man, I put away childish things, in a sudden, in an instant, I became an adult.
Paul was saying in our spiritual state, we must grow up, we must be adult, we must be young men and women who are trusting in the Lord and when we stand before Him face to face and we look
at our Redeemer, we begin to see that even in this present world, we can see a completed perfectness of Christ in our word.
We can see that Christ's word has been fulfilled in that moment where we have scripture and we have this wonderful, beautiful picture of what it will be like when we get to see Christ face to face. You see, we often will look through a mirror dimly.
We'll often look at life and we can't understand why we're going through a certain situation. We can't understand why we're going through this specific trial or tribulation. But as Adam said this morning,
there is this beautiful thing of hindsight where we can look back and we can see, oh God,
you took me through that to prepare me for this. You took me through this situation so that when I was this age and I had a child or a grandchild and they're going through that same thing, I can help them and I can encourage them as they go
Longing for a Deeper Relationship
through this. Church, every day of my life, I long to see Christ more.
As I read my Bible, as I pray, as I try to lead my children in the right way, I long to see Christ more and more.
I long for a greater relationship with Him. I long to be able to be in unison with Christ and to have His thoughts be my thoughts and to have His ways be my ways. But oftentimes, we fail that.
I know I fail that on a daily basis. And if you were probably honest with me, you'd say, Pastor James, I fail that as well. And Christ is saying here
in our elementary states, we're going to fail Christ. But it's when we have the Holy Spirit working inside of our lives, working inside of what we're doing, molding us to be more like Him every single day of our life,
that's when we begin to see Christ more and more. It's only, church, when we enter into heaven in the fullest presence we get to see Him face to face. We get to know Him fully as He has been known fully. And today, church,
in our life, we get to see Him through a glass darkly.
As a pastor for 13 years now, I've sat by the bedside of many people on their last breath and in their last moment.
And I've said this before, it's nothing new, but I've never sat beside someone who has lived their life to the fullest of Christ and said, you know, Pastor James,
I wish that I would have went to one more football game. You know, I really wish I could have went and saw the Panthers lose one more time. They never said that.
They never said, you know, Pastor James, I really wish that I could have given one more dollar to the church.
They never said, Pastor James, I really wish that I could have done this or that, or I really wish I could have went to Hawaii one day, or I really wish that I could have went on that cruise. I really wish I could have taken that plane trip to somewhere.
But more times than not, as I sit beside the bedside of an elderly person, they'll say, Pastor James, I wish I would have served Jesus more. One lady, specifically, I'm thinking back, was the first funeral that I did at my former church. And she looked at me, she was known for making fried apple pies,
and she hadn't been at church in about five or six years, and she said, Pastor James, I just wish I could step foot in church one more time. I just wish I could sit around God's people and hear them sing out the glory to God.
I wish I could hear the pastor preach in person one more time. I wish I could just sit under his glory.
Yes, I read my Bible, and yes, I pray, and I know I have a relationship with Jesus, but I wish I could just be back in church one more time. I wish I could be back around God's people one more time. More times than not, that's what I've heard.
I wish I could be back where God's people are at.
The key, as we grow closer to Christ, we grow closer to what he has for us, we should have a longing to be around those who are like him. We should have a longing to be around those who are like Christ.
We should have a longing to be around God's people more and more. That's where maturity happens. It happens in small groups. It happens here at church.
It happens in Sunday school as we grow closer together, and we bear one another's burdens as we talk about what we've went through, as we talk about the things that Christ has went through, we've went through for the cause of Christ.
We're able to encourage one another, and it doesn't leave us in this immature state, but it brings us to this maturity of who Christ is and what he's done for us. I'm going to end today with the very first three words of verse 8.
Go back with me just a couple of verses. Love never ends. Love is eternal. Love is eternal.
This morning, church, as Terry comes in place for us, I want us to understand this, because this is the greatest theological thing that I've learned as studying through this passage, is that love cannot fail because it shares the nature of God.
Eternal Nature of God's Love
It shares the eternality of who God is and what God is.
The Bible says that God is love, and therefore we have love in our lives. Things of this world will cease to exist. The gifts, the pleasures, our family, they will cease to exist, but love will last for eternity, because Christ is love and God is love.
As it says in 1 John 3, verse 16, God is love, and therefore we have love, because Christ and God is love.
Imagine with me for a moment, heaven. Everything you've ever been taught about heaven, the glory of heaven, the greatness of heaven, the gifts that God has given us that we'll one day get in heaven, that we'll throw back at His feet. Ultimately, heaven is this. It's a place of holy love.
It's a place where, in paradise of love, where love will be everything. We will be there because of the love of Christ.
We will be throwing our crowns back at Christ because of His love for us, and our love for the world. When we love as Christ's love, and we bring a piece of heaven
that's up in heaven that we long to be there one day, we take a piece of heaven, and we bring it into earth because we love as Christ loves.
This should be a love that is so self-consuming that is not about what this world can do for me, but what I can do for Christ in this world. You see, love will outlast all of my failures.
All the things that I've done wrong in my life, all the hard words that I've said to my kids, all the hard words that I've said to my wife, all the failures that I'm going to fail you as your pastor, love will outlast that. Love will overlook that, and love will say,
it's okay. I'm thankful this morning for the permanence of love, that love will not end as gifts have ended. Love will not be partial as we see through a glass darkly. So my question for you this morning, just a couple of questions. How is your love this morning? Is your love like Christ's love?
Christ's love, the disciples came to him selfish, and Christ loved them. The disciples came to him, and we're going to betray him, and we're going to leave him, and Christ got down on his hands and feet and washed their feet. You see, Christ's love is perfect. Christ's love is holy.
Christ's love is greater than we can ever imagine. Are we trying to tap into that love in every way of our action? Or are you relying on the temporal things this morning for love? Things that are going to pass away, things that are going to not be here in 100 years.
Are we relying on those things for love? Or are we relying on Christ for love? Maybe this morning, church, we're stuck in our elementary state.
Maybe we're stuck in this state of immaturity, this state of love that we need things in order to be transformed when the love has been given from Christ to take us to a deeper, greater love for who he is and what he's done for us.
Church, whatever it may be this morning, whether you respond in your seat, whether you come forward, whether you make a public motion to move forward, to come and seek the Lord in a greater way, whatever way you respond, respond as the Lord's leading you. Let's pray. Lord, we love you.
God, I can't say that enough. We love you because you first loved us. Lord, we are so undeserving of it. And I thank you for it this morning.
Closing Prayer and Reflection
Lord, help us this morning to understand the permanence of love that you've given us. Lord, help us to grow deeper in our love for you. And it's in your name we pray. Amen.
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