Selfless Love

I am so excited to open the Word of God with you all. And I'm not going to preach a Mother's Day sermon per se, but all of my examples are going to mention mothers. So if you'd like to call it a Mother's Day sermon, feel free.

Amen. We love the mothers in this church. We love all of our mothers.

And well, I'll get into it in a minute here. We'll see what we're talking about. Let's read the Word of God, 1 Corinthians chapter 13, and we're going to read verses 1 through 5. Paul writes, Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.

And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. Verse 4. Love suffers long and is kind.

Love does not envy. Love does not parade itself, is not puffed up, does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil. Amen.

Let's pray. This text, O Father, is far beyond me. And so, Father, I ask you for your mercy and your love.

Father, we ask that you remind every one of us right here that we are covered in the blood of Jesus Christ. If we believe in you, and we ask you, Lord, that we all would fade into the background and that Jesus would increase. We ask you that we would see Jesus in this text, that we would hear the words of Jesus and not the words of man.

Lord, we want to hear the voice of God today. The voice of the Lord is over the waters. The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars.

The voice of the Lord divides the flames of fire. The voice of the Lord is over many waters. And your voice is here today, Lord.

And we want to hear from you. Hide me, Lord. We all here believe in the Holy Spirit.

So may the Holy Spirit be the preacher and the after preacher and the convictor tonight and the one who gives all the illumination. Lord, we wait for you to work. We love you.

In your name, amen. Verse 5. Love does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil. Incredible.

Amazing. Text. Is it not, brothers and sisters? Incredible, incredible word right here.

Like I said, I'm not going to give a Mother's Day sermon, but all of my examples will be about mothers. So it might sound like a Mother's Day sermon, and that's just fine. I want us to dive into this text right here.

And one thing that Mother's Day will help us do to see in this text is that in this text right here, love is personified. Love, in the Greek, is actually a female word. And Paul is personifying love.

So in the Old King James of verse 5, we read, it says something like, love does not seek her own. So you can almost hear some feminine qualities in this verse today. So for me to bring in some examples of mothers and women in our lives is entirely appropriate.

I hope you all understand that. Because the Greek word, agape, is a feminine word. So if you were reading this in the Greek, you would hear that it's love personified as a woman.

And you're seeing the qualities of love here. Such a precious and beautiful text. And I want to say this as we start.

I pray that all of the mothers in this room are encouraged today by this thought. A loving, godly, Christian mother is an earth-shaking thing. Amen? A loving, godly, Christian mother is an earth-shaking thing.

You have so much influence, dear women, dear mothers, in your families' lives. And I want to tell you all a brief story as we dive into this text. I think some of you know this, but this is part of my testimony.

I was saved when I was 29 years old. 29 years old. But when I was 10 years old, my grandmother, my dad's mom, came to me one day.

And my grandpa was seated in his big armchair. And next to that was my grandmother's armchair. And my grandma was making some food in the other room.

And I was seated there. Out of nowhere, she comes beside me, right here, and she kissed my ear, I remember. My grandma could be a little awkward at times, and she would give a sloppy kiss right here.

And we'd say, Grandma, what are you doing? But she came right into my ear, and you wouldn't believe this. She said to me, Sam, you do know that Jesus Christ is your personal Savior, don't you? And then she walked back to the kitchen. And she kissed me on the ear.

Hallelujah! Praise God! But think about that, everybody here. That was when I was 10 years old. My grandma said that.

She had the daring, the gall, to come up to me and say that. And I, at that time, said, what is Grandma talking about? What is Jesus Christ? What is a personal Savior? What in the world is she saying? And then my grandmother watched me in my teens and in my twenties absolutely go against the Lord. And I was horrible.

And it wasn't until I was 29 that I got saved. And I came to agree with my grandma, and I said, you know what? Jesus Christ is my personal Savior. Hallelujah! But my grandmother wasn't alive when I was 29.

She didn't see that. But I want to encourage you all with this. You say those words, you speak those words into your children's lives, you raise them up godly, you tell them that they have to turn to Jesus Christ, and that word will not return to you void.

Amen? There will be effects. Your children will hear. In my case, I didn't hear for what? Do the math.

10 to 29. For 19 years. But eventually I did hear.

Amen. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

Let's dive into this text, verse 5, right here. And I don't know if you all saw the aurora borealis the other night, but we received a text from my dad saying, go outside and look at the sky. And as you go outside, you see just something very faint, just little clouds, right? Little strands.

And then as our eyes started to adjust, we saw, oh, there's green and purple, and it's so beautiful. And you start to see those colors refracting in the sky. Did you all see that? Incredible.

Now as we dive into this text, the same thing is going to happen. Many of us could say, yeah, been there, done that. We've read this text 100 times.

We've heard it at funerals. We've heard it at weddings. But today I want you to just stare at it with me.

And let's watch as Jesus Christ comes alive before us in this text. Verse 5. Love does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil. I want to simply tell you today four things about love.

Four things in verse 5 that we all need. Four things about this personified, beautiful love. And I pray that as we study this text today, you will see Jesus.

You will see Jesus, and you will follow Him. And that your life would be pumped with the love of Jesus Christ. First, love is never out of place.

Look at the text with me, brothers and sisters. Verse 5. Love does not behave rudely. In the King James it says, love doth not behave itself unseemly.

In the New King James, does not behave rudely. And literally, what our text is saying here is, love does not act without a shape or without a scheme. Isn't that interesting? What does that mean? Love does not act without a plan, without a scheme, without a shape.

It means something like this. If you are truly loving, then everything in your life is in the proper place. Everything in your life is deliberate.

You're using wisdom, you're using discernment to channel your love in different ways. And this same exact idea is found in Psalm 1 and verse 3, where David says, He shall be like a tree planted by rivers of water that brings forth his fruit in his season. Listen to that.

If we are godly people, if we have Christian love, we bring forth our fruit in its season. Meaning, it's not that we're always just bearing oranges all around the place. But as someone needs an orange, we give them an orange.

As someone needs an apple, we give them an apple. As someone needs mercy, you give mercy. And that's what Paul is talking about here.

It's not just the idea of being rude or something like that, but it's this idea of love is never out of place. Love has a plan. Love has a scheme.

Love is looking to fit in in the right ways as you go through life. Amen? Do you all see that? Now let me ask you, do you know anyone in your life who's like that? We know many people who can't adjust to things. And I'll admit, at times I can be that way.

You come off of preaching, and then I preach to my wife the rest of the day. And then I preach in the night. That's not good, right? That's not love.

Or you like using your phone, and we've got phone addictions, and then you're at a family dinner, and you're on your phone, while you should be relating to your family, right? But see, love, look at that beauty right there. Love does not behave rudely. Love is not out of place like that.

Some of us talk too much, and then you're just talking and throwing words at everybody. When someone actually needs your ear, someone needs you to listen to them. Amen? See, so love learns to act differently in different places.

Love is never out of place. My example right here is my own mother, Michelle Robitaille, an incredible, incredible mother. There's one place in her life where she gets a little wild, and that's where she, if she's ever in the car with my auntie Mona, then they're just, they're sort of crazy, okay? She wouldn't mind if I told you.

If you put Michelle and Mona together, they're just, whoop, you know, whatever. But the rest of my life, and that's fine that she does that, the rest of my life, my mother has modeled for me reacting to the person that she's with. She's in the car with me.

We were listening to NPR. She'd be teaching me about world events. We'd be at home.

She's making my brother read, even though he doesn't want to read. We were out of place. She says, okay, go sit on the stairs.

And you know if she says sit on the stairs, you know what's going to happen. That's discipline. And then she's with my dad, and she's different there.

She's giving him love. Do you see how that works? Love is not out of place. Love does not behave rudely.

Love does not behave itself unseemly. Love is always looking to react properly to the person before him. Amen? Do we need that, brothers and sisters? Do you need that type of love in your life? It's not just one size fits all.

You're not just doing the same thing with everybody you meet, but you're actually listening. You're actually saying, what does he need? What does she need? Can anybody see Jesus right there? Did Jesus do that? Or did he have a one size fits all ministry model? No. Jesus at times would say, you all remember John 4? He would say, my time has not yet come.

He said, I'm backing off right now. In other places he would say, this is your hour and the power of darkness. In other places he would say, I must go into the next town to preach, for it's for this purpose that I came forth.

You see what our Lord is doing? He's saying, what is the moment right now? What's the pressing need that I need to meet? Sometimes he wouldn't even show up and heal someone until a few days later, because he knew that they needed to wait. Sometimes he'd come very quickly. Amen.

Love is never out of place. Love is never out of place. Would you live that way, brothers and sisters? Would we have that Christ-likeness in us? I pray we would.

Secondly, now you see what we're doing? This is not a TED talk. This is a sermon. We're just looking at the text before us.

We're just reading the text, and we're explaining it, and we're asking the Lord to illuminate his word and make our hearts come alive with his word. Let's look at the next word right here. Verse 5. Love does not behave rudely.

Love does not seek its own. Here's a second point for you. Love is not selfish.

In the King James, love seeketh not her own. Love is not selfish. Love is not self-seeking.

Love is not concerned only with things like itself. Oh, this is such an amazing lesson here. Is it not? Now, we can at times be concerned only with ourselves, can't we? And if we're 30 years old, we can say, I need a study group just with 30-year-olds.

Or if we're a woman, you say, I need to be around only women. Or we can say, I love hunting, so I need only people who hunt with me. That would be seeking only your own thing.

Amen? But what it's talking about right here is we're not concerned only with our own things, not only with things that we like, not only with things that benefit us. Have any of you ever seen a Baltimore Oriole? Have you ever seen that little bird? My wife loves to watch birds, and Baltimore Orioles started to come to our house in the last week. It's a very, very beautiful thing.

So you see this bird, and what color is it on its belly? Anybody know? Amen. It's orange on the bottom of its belly. It's this big orange belly.

And so Kiara says, let's put out oranges, and that'll attract them, and they'll stay. So we put out two little oranges on the tree. And then what you see is the Oriole comes, and he rubs his big orange belly right up next to the orange.

And that looks exactly like this verse right here. He's seeking his own. And I started to say, man, he looks selfish.

He looks orange, and he wants oranges, and he sucks on the oranges, and it's just orange and orange and orange. And if you're like that, then you're going against this love right here. But think in our lives, brothers and sisters, we ought not to be like Orioles, amen? We ought to be like the Osprey.

Have you seen the Osprey? The Osprey will go outside of its nest, and he'll dive into the sea, and he'll catch a salmon, and he'll take it back, and he won't eat it himself. He'll bring it back to his nest, and he'll feed his family with it. Amen? So you can either be an Oriole Christian, where you're just consumed with yourself, and you look orange, so you're looking for other orange people to hang out with, or you can be an Osprey Christian, where you say, love seeketh not her own.

I'm out to find what you need, what you need, what you need. Amen? Do you all see that? That is so important. And here I want to give, as an example, the women of this church.

I hope I won't puff up anybody here. But I'm just seeing in this church many women who do not seek their own. When I look out upon this church, it's like I see little vectors where each soul is pointing outside of itself, looking to help other people, looking to help your families, wondering, how can we pray for them? What can we do for them? They need deliverance.

This person needs help. I just commend you, dear women of this church. Please go on in that.

Do not seek your own. Love seeks what other people need. Amen? Amen? What about Jesus right here? Do you see Jesus in this phrase? When Jesus was on this earth, did He seek His own things? What did Jesus seek? Constantly throughout His life, His phrase was, My meat is to do what? The will of My Father.

He wasn't seeking His own. It was always the will of His Father. Always bending to the will of His Father.

Always completely surrendered to the will of His Father. Are you like that, brothers and sisters? Or do you seek your own? Let's go on. We've said love is never out of place.

Love is not selfish. What about number three right here? Look at verse five. Does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked.

My third point for you today is this. Love, you want to write this down? Love does not get triggered. Love, did I get an amen? Love does not get triggered.

Literally in the Greek, it is this. Love is not easily provoked. It is not easy to prick love and make love go, Oh, what was that? Oh, I don't like that.

Oh, that hurts me. Oh no, I can't take that. Oh no.

That's not in the nature of love. Love is not easily provoked. Has anyone here noticed that in many of the non-Christian movements today, everyone is triggered all the time.

In fact, it is a way of showing that you are virtuous if you are triggered. If you are part of BLM or the LGBTQ movement, the way you show your allegiance to those movements is by being triggered. By saying, I can't stand anyone who goes against my beliefs.

I can't take it. I can't be provoked by it. No, it's too much for me.

And that's actually how you signal your virtue. Everybody know that? Everybody been studying what's happening in our culture right now? We have a culture of triggered people, of trigger happy, of provoked people. What should the Christian be like in the midst of today's evil and perverse generation? What should the Christian be like? We should say, my Lord told me.

He hated him. If the world hated him, they're going to hate me too. I should know that.

I wrote down some words right here. Let me just say this properly. Instead of being triggered all the time, we should have composure.

Instead of being triggered all the time, we should never be taken off guard. It should be very clear to us as loving Christians that people are going to provoke us. People are going to hate us.

People are going to go against us. And we need to learn to have composure. Love is not easily provoked.

Amen? For an example here, I want to tell you about the spiritual mothers of Christie Street Baptist Church in Toronto. This is where I got saved. Christie Street Baptist Church in Toronto.

The dear spiritual mothers of that church. There were three women who helped me come into the kingdom, and I see them as my spiritual mothers. When I was a young Christian, just a few years ago, I would get provoked all the time.

And someone would say something in Sunday school, and I would say, Mrs. Modest, Hazel, Vicenta, can you believe he said that? That was so wrong. Why did he say that? And I would come to these dear three women, and they each had ways of not being provoked. So can I tell you about how they would deal with it? Okay, first, Hazel.

She would say, Oh, I don't know anything about that. I don't think about that. And she would just say, Turn your mind off of that.

Think about something else. And Hazel was very steady. And she would say, Just turn your gaze over to Jesus.

Stop thinking about what that guy said in Sunday school. That might have been wrong. Amen? Should we all be more like Hazel? Where we say, I'm not going to be easily provoked.

I'm not going to think about it. I'm going to focus on Jesus. And then along came Mrs. Modest.

And I would say to her, No, but Mrs. Modest, he actually said that. Can you believe that? And she would always say, Sam, there's probably something else going on. Have you all learned that lesson? When we have road rage, you're on the road.

One of my friends, this is the best lesson you could ever learn. There's probably something else going on. That person who just cut you off, what if they're on their way to the hospital? What if they just got out of a messy divorce? What if they're just coming through something horrible in their lives? And you say, He provoked me.

How could he do that? How could he get in the way of me? Instead, we ought to be more like Mrs. Modest. And she would say, Sam, there's something behind the surface. You don't know the whole story.

Don't be easily provoked. Love is not easily provoked. Amen? And then finally, there was Vicenta, who was from the Philippines, and she was a mighty prayer warrior.

She's still there in Toronto. When I would come to her and be provoked and say, How could he say that, Vicenta? She would say, Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. She would just laugh.

She was a very short woman. She would just laugh and laugh. I said, What? That's not a proper response.

Are you laughing? But in fact, it is. Do you all remember Psalm 2? When it says, Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? And it says, They're coming after the Lord and against His anointed, against His Christ, against His Messiah. And you know what it says right after that? He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh.

God looks at all the conflict in this world, at all the things that could provoke you. And you know what He's doing? He's saying, Ha, ha, ha, ha. It's all under My feet.

My Son has come to pay the price for their sins. My Son has come and risen from the dead. My Son has ascended into heaven and He has power over all things.

And He that sits in the heavens is laughing. When you get provoked, you ought to be like Vicenta. You could say, Okay, that hurt me.

That was weird. Why did He say that? And I could just sit back and go, Ha, ha. I'm a child of God.

I'm a child of God. Ha, ha. You ever tried that? We ought to try that, brothers and sisters.

Love is not easily provoked. Love is not easily provoked. Our Lord Jesus Christ, there's an old song that said when He was going to that cross, He never said a mumbling word.

You all know that song? He never said a mumbling word. Our Lord Jesus was not easily provoked. Our Lord had composure.

He was never taken off guard. He knew what to expect from men and women in this world. And it didn't surprise Him.

He was not easily provoked. Fourth and finally, let's look at our text. Love does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil.

Would you give me five more minutes as we dive into this? This is very, very important. Love thinks no evil. For our fourth point, you can write down love has a clean mind.

Love has a clean mind. The sense of this text, there are two ways you can translate the Greek right here. So please listen.

Please study with me. Just give me a few more minutes. This is so, so important.

So important. The first sense right here is this. Love has no evil thoughts.

See that in verse five? Love thinks no evil. One literal translation is love has no evil thoughts. That means not only do you not do evil, but you also don't think evil.

And this is so important as we grow in our Christian love. That it's not only that you've stopped punching people, or that you've stopped swearing at people, or that you've stopped hurting people outside of you, but it's also that your mind has become clean, and you're not thinking evil of people. Did you know, brothers, I'm going to address the brothers and the fathers in this room right now.

Do you know that we can be very clean on the outside, and we can look very good. We're holding down a job. We're doing all the right things.

And I say amen to all of that. And our lives look relatively pure on the outside. But in the inside, deep in your mind, you could think something evil of your wife.

And you could just let that fester in the back of your mind. And you know what will happen? Your life, you'll start to feel crippled. The Lord won't honor it.

The Lord will know that you're thinking evil. Even though everything looks good on the outside. But the sense of love is this.

When you think this evil thought against your wife or someone in your life, may this text come as a lightning bolt to you. And you say, Love thinketh no evil. Even that thought has to go.

Not just the action, but that thought. The entire thought must go. And you rebuke it in Jesus' name.

And you say, I will not think that evil anymore against my wife. And you know that if you continue to think it deep in your heart, it's going to hurt you. It's going to tear you down.

It's going to cripple you. Amen? Doesn't love, doesn't Jesus' love go pretty deep? Love doesn't even think evil. So we ought to clean our minds, brothers and sisters.

And here's one more sense that this means. Some of your translations will read this way. Love does not take account of wrongs.

Love does not take account of wrongs. So it's not only that you don't think evil thoughts, but also when people hurt you, you don't take account of that. You're releasing them.

You're forgiving them. You're releasing bitterness. And you are not taking account of wrongs.

Amen? Do we need that in our life? Many of us, again, might look good on the outside, but deep in our minds, we're saying, He hurt me. She hurt me. I can't move on.

I can't forgive. But we got to forgive. Right, sister? We got to forgive.

I want to give a final example that makes me cry, but I should say this. My mime is my mom's mom. She had almost every bone in her body replaced at some point.

She suffered a horrible, horrible life. Cancer in all different places. She had a husband leave her without notice.

And the last time I saw her, she was in a nursing home, and she was being abused by the people there. They weren't taking care of her well. We tried to redress that situation, and we did right at the end.

But when I look in the eyes of my mime, who's not here anymore, I saw this. She didn't take account of all those wrongs. Her eyes were soft.

She had the most beautiful, soft eyes. And she never complained to me. I never heard her complain of anything.

And she'd often say, Oh, Sam, just don't think of it. Oh, Sam, just don't think about it. But she was so soft and so forgiving.

Could we all be that way, brothers and sisters? Love is that way. Love does not think evil, and love does not hold on to those wrongs that people have done. You got to release them.

You got to get rid of that bitterness. You got to clean your mind. You have to have those soft eyes like my mime, and just say, I'm going to bear.

I'm going to bear with it. I have Jesus. I have Jesus.

Amen? What about our Lord Jesus as we close? Did He have a clean mind? Did our Lord Jesus think no evil? Or did He go around with evil thoughts? He did not. He was sinless. He was sinless even all the way through His brain.

Isn't that amazing? And did our Lord Jesus Christ take account of wrongs that were done to Him? What about on that final day when He goes up to Golgotha, to the place of the scald? Do you remember what Luke says in his account in Luke 24 and verse 34? What does our Lord say? It says, And they crucified Him. And right after that, what does He say to His Father? Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. What is He doing right there? He's taking no account of wrongs.

Even in the midst of His crucifixion, He's saying, I release them. Father, release them. And some of them, you better bet your bottom dollar they're going to be in heaven.

He forgave them all the way to heaven. These people crucifying Him and He pleads for them. I will not take account of wrong.

I will forgive them. Father, forgive them. The beauty of our Lord.

The beauty of our Lord. His love did not behave rudely. His love did not seek its own.

His love is not provoked. His love thinks no evil. Praise God.

Hallelujah. As I close right now, I just want to ask you, do you know this love? Do you know this love? Have you gone all the way with Jesus? There are many, many people right now in our world who are on the fence. Who have one foot over here with Jesus and one foot over here in the world.

Have you gone all the way with Jesus? Don't stay on the fence. Jump over into the open fields of Jesus' love. Go all the way with Him.

All that we've talked about today, let it pump into your life. Say, I surrender to You, Lord. I give my life to You, Lord.

I believe in You, Lord. I repent of my sins. I believe that You're the only way I could get to heaven, not my own works.

Have you done that? Have you done that? I'm talking to more and more evangelists in Portland, Maine who say there are so many people who claim they're Christians, but they haven't gone all the way. Have you gone all the way? Do you want this sort of love to pervade your life? Or do you want the opposite of this, a love that is rude? A love that seeks its own? A love that is triggered all the time? A love that is bitter and angry at other people? Come be with Jesus, please. Come give your life to Jesus, please.

Please. If the Lord touches your heart at all, after our final song, we'll just open up time for prayer here. If anybody needs prayer on anything, if you need more of this love in your life, if you want to give your life to Jesus Christ, come up.

Pray today. Pray today. Hallelujah.

Our Lord is good. Our Lord has good in store for everyone in this room. Our Lord is a good God.

Amen? Our Lord is a good God. Praise God. Let's pray, and then we'll sing.

Jesus, pour out your love upon us. Jesus, pour out this beautiful love in our lives, Lord. Jesus, help us to surrender to you.

Jesus, we want to give ourselves fully to you. Jesus, every moment of our lives, every part that does not conform to this text that we just read, Lord, let us get under the umbrella of God's love. Lord, we want to get under there.

We want to surrender to you. We want to say you are our shield, our glory, the lifter up of our heads. Lord, you are our safe hiding place.

When the world is teaching a completely opposite love, Lord, may everyone in this room give themselves to your love, this simple love, this sacrificial love, this selfless love. Oh, God, you're worthy of it all. Amen.