What the Bible Really Says About Love vs Spiritual Gifts

Hello and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. Good to have everybody in this afternoon for another session of four programs. And we realize that some of you have come from quite a distance. Got a couple here from Oklahoma City, others of you from Macalester. And we just realize that it takes an effort to come up and be a part of this taping. And we just want you to know that even the television audience appreciates you people. You'd be surprised how many comments we get on the class that we have in the background. And that makes them feel like they're a part of the class. So when I say thanks for coming, I mean it from the depths of my heart. All right, now again, we have to always let folk know that we're just an informal Bible study. I am not here to attack anybody or to ridicule what other people believe. It's my prerogative and I feel the Lord has led me to teach it as I see it. I don't expect everyone to agree, you don't have to. But on certain precepts, of course, we have to be dogmatic. And that, of course, is the plan of salvation. I will not deviate from that one iota. But when it comes to some of these other areas of differences of opinion, don't try to change my mind, don't write and call and try to change my thinking. Because I'm pretty well set in concrete by now. And when you get to my age, that's one of the things that we have a right to be. But whatever, as we teach, we just trust that you'll be looking at what the Book says and not what I say. Again, I will always let people understand that you cannot always trust denominations. I don't care who they are, they are still only men. But this, of course, is not men's idea. This is the Word of God, and this is what we have to go by, and this is what we'll be judged by someday. Now we finished chapter 11 in our last program, and so I've got on the board that in this next series, hopefully in four programs, I don't know if we'll make it or not, I would like to cover these next three chapters, 12, 13, and 14, as they sit here in this letter to the Corinthians. Now, as I've been stressing ever since we started the book of Corinthians, Paul seemingly received a letter, and again, you might want to go back to chapter 7, verse 1, so that you'll know what I'm talking about. It seems to be that he received a letter from the Corinthian congregation with a whole list of questions. And I think Paul is doing like I do even now, when someone writes and they have several questions, I answer the questions in the order that they wrote them in their letter. And I think that's exactly what Paul has been doing here in 1 Corinthians. Now in chapter 7, verse 1, he says, Now concerning the things whereof you wrote unto me. You see that? And so he goes on then, and he deals with one problem after another, as they had evidently listed it in this letter. Now then, when you come to chapter 12, now I said we were going to study 13, but chapter 12, he starts out the same way. Now, concerning spiritual things. So what do you suppose? Well, that was another question in that letter. And so he's going to cover it, as only the Apostle Paul, of course, by inspiration, could cover it. Now it's rather interesting, and I guess I had never really thought of it this way until I've spent the last three months just racking my whole being on these three chapters, getting ready for this series, like I never have before. And it suddenly dawned on me, why is chapter 13, the love chapter, which of course almost everybody in Christendom knows, why is it sandwiched, and I'm going to use that word, why is it sandwiched right in between 12 and 14? It could have just as well been back in Romans, it could have just as well been in Ephesians, it could have been in almost any one of his other letters, but why did the Holy Spirit inspire the Apostle to write I Corinthians 13 in between 12 and 14? Well I think you're going to see in just a little bit, as we now take off, that this is the great love chapter of the whole New Testament. And again, it's in that response to the problems and the questions that the Corinthian church was having. And don't lose that. I'm going to hammer it home until you see it in your sleep, that the Corinthian church was plagued with problems. They were carnal, they were babes in Christ, they couldn't even handle the meat of the Word. And I won't take you back again, but that's in chapter 3, verse 1. He says, you are yet carnal, I have to feed you as babes, and I can't give you the meat of the Word. Alright, now this whole book of Corinthians has been dealing with the problems of a carnal congregation. Now, the Apostle Paul could have just blasted them on some of these things, and especially chapters 12 and 14. But instead, he is not only preparing the Corinthian congregation to accept chapters 12 and 14, but he's preparing his own heart and attitude, lest he become too belligerent, lest he become, as he says in 2 Corinthians, that he came down with them almost in anger. And so what does he have to do? Well, the Holy Spirit has prompted him to pen chapter 13, the love chapter. And now let's look at it in that light, that we want to approach the things that are so controversial, even in the Corinthian church in 12 and 14, based on the love and the understanding and the patience that we see in this chapter. It is, I think, imperative that we look at chapter 13 before I start making any comments on the other two chapters, because this was the Apostle's attitude as he approached these carnal Corinthians. So chapter 13, now verse 1. "...though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels." Now I'm going to stop right there. That does not say that he spoke in the angelic tongue. It only is a hypothetical statement. If he says hypothetically, I could speak in the tongues of angels, or he said, if I could speak in all the languages of the world. That's what it is. Hypothetically, if that could be the case. It doesn't say that he did. So hypothetically, if I could speak with the tongues or the languages of men and angels, and have not love, then what? I am become as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. Now, what is he opening the door to? How are these Corinthians going to respond to some of the things he's going to say in 12 and 14? Well, without the attitude of love and patience and understanding, they're going to get upset. They're going to get angry. And I shouldn't doubt that some of my audience will. But I guess the Lord does everything in His own way. He's so sovereign, even in the little detail. Ordinarily, when we leave for taping, we got a 90 mile drive too, you know. Ordinarily, before we leave for taping on these Wednesday mornings, we do not have time to look at our mail. We usually do that after we get home. But this morning, I just for some reason, went and got the mail, opened it up quickly, and I'm sure that this one little letter was meant for me this afternoon. And it was a lady writing from Minnesota, and she said, I've been watching you, and she said, even though I'm from a background far different than yours, even though you sometimes say things that I can't agree with yet, and this is what I just loved, she said, never have you offended me with anything you have taught. And this is my whole goal, that maybe I have to say things that would be contrary to what some people have been taught. But I want to do it without making offense. And this is exactly what Paul is saying. I'm coming to you in the spirit of love. And this has to be for all of us. When you approach some person that you may know is as hell bound as they can be, don't ever go up to them and say, look, unless you do such and such, you're going to go to hell. Hey, you'll close their mind right now. You don't do that to people. But you approach them with this whole attitude that the Apostle uses of love, and patience, and understanding, and not compromising the truth in the process. Now let's go on. And so he says, Though I have the gift of prophecy, which of course he admonishes the Corinthians to look for, that it was far better than some of the other things. But he says, even if I have the best gift, prophecy, and understand all mysteries, now I wish I had more time. Even when you go into the pagan religions of the world, at the very core of every pagan religion, what do you find? Mysteries. See? The secrets of that evil religion. And so Paul is really saying here, that even though he had the gift of understanding, I think even the mysteries of the Oriental pagan idolatrous religions, and of course he uses the same word in his own letters, that he was revealed the mysteries of God. But nevertheless, this is speaking of something that is beyond the norm. And he says, even if I had this supernatural ability to understand all the mysteries, and if I had faith that could remove mountains, and if I don't have love, it all amounts to how much? Nothing. Nothing. And you know, the letter to the church at Ephesus, back there in Revelation, Oh, they were so correct in everything. They had their doctrines straight, they had their discipline in order, and yet as the Lord Jesus wrote that letter, or spoke that letter to that church, what was their major lacking? No love. No love. It doesn't do any good to have all your doctrines straight. It doesn't do any good to have perfect discipline. If there is no love, it counts for nothing. And so this is what the Apostle is bringing out to these Corinthians. Look, I'm going to be coming at you with some things that I don't agree with what you're doing, but I'm going to do it in the spirit of love. Alright, let's read on. Verse 3. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, how could anybody do anything better than that? And though I give my body to be burned as a complete sacrifice to even the service of God, and if I have not love, it's all for nothing. Oh listen, everything we say, think, and do with regards to our family, our wife, our neighbors, our business partners, whatever the case may be, it still has to be based on this premise of love. Now you understand of course that this term love is not the erotic love that Hollywood promotes. This is talking about the agape love that is God-centered. And only the true believer can really have and exercise this kind of love. The unsaved world doesn't know what it is. They cannot comprehend it. But for us, Paul says, this is out there for us to latch on to. Alright, now then going on. Verse 4. He begins to explain now all of the attributes of this one word, love. Love suffereth long, and is kind. Love envieth not. Now the other word of course for envy is covet. If you love someone, you cannot covet what is theirs. That goes right back into the commandments, doesn't it? Love does not vaunt itself. In other words, love does not become egotistical. Love does not become arrogant. I think that's a better word. It doesn't vaunt itself and try to put pressure on the subjects of your love. It just doesn't work that way. It's not puffed up. That's self-explanatory. It does not behave itself unseemly. Love never seeketh her own. Love is not easily provoked. Now that doesn't mean it can never be provoked, but it's not easily provoked. And it thinketh no evil. True love can think no evil. Quite a statement, isn't it? All right, and I'm hurrying because I want to spend most of the time of this half hour in the verses from the middle to the end. It rejoiceth not in iniquity. It rejoiceth in the truth. Love beareth all things. Believeth all things. Now wait a minute. What's the other word for believe? Faith. So what is again our faith based on? Love. See that's the whole crux of the work of the cross, was the love of God that He showered on mankind when He sent the best that heaven had to the cross of Calvary. Now of course as far as Christ is concerned, His wrath was poured upon Him. But as His wrath was poured upon Christ, the love of God was shed abroad on the human race. All right, reading on. Beareth all things. Believeth all things. Hopeth all things. Endureth all things. And then verse 8. Love never fails. Love will never let us down. Now, we know human nature. We know that there are times we may love our neighbor and we may do everything we can for them and they're still going to take advantage of us. We know that. But over the long haul, love is going to persevere. I think one of the best examples of that, I can remember old President Abraham Lincoln, I think was the epitome of this kind of Christian love. And at the height of the war, there was a gentleman who had ridiculed Abraham Lincoln back before he became President. Ridiculed him to such a state that he once admonished an explorer traveling all over Africa looking for a gorilla. He said, Why go to Africa when all you have to do is go to Springfield, Illinois? Referring, of course, to Abraham Lincoln. And he made other disparaging remarks concerning Abraham Lincoln. But beside that, when Lincoln needed the right man to be his Secretary of War during the midst of the Civil War, who do you suppose he appointed? This man, Stanton. And as time went by, and Stanton served under the President, he continued to give him snide remarks, no respect for the man whatsoever. But Lincoln never paid any attention to it. And then when he was assassinated, and as they had laid his body in a side room, Stanton came in and through his tears, weeping, he says, Never has there been such a leader of men. Well, you know, that touches our heart. It should. But what made Lincoln what he was? He knew this whole attribute of godly love. And a man like Stanton never phased that love. He continued to work with him, appointed him, and so forth. And I think this is what we have to understand. That a lot of times, we don't get the immediate gratification. But in the long run, what goes around, comes around. Our love is still going to be a profitable thing. Alright, now let's move on quickly. So, verse 8. Love never faileth, but whether there be prophecies, in other words, the gift of prophecy, which he says back in chapter 12, is the one that is by far the best, it's going to fail. Well, how can something that's so good fail? Well, you see, before this book came into print, the New Testament, the Old Testament, but before the New Testament came into print, and Paul had already been, you might say, winning hundreds and hundreds of people to Christ, congregations were being started, they didn't have anything written to go by. Nothing written. None of the Gospels were even written yet. In fact, Paul will quote some of the words of Jesus as we see them in the Gospel in your Red Letter edition. Paul quotes them. And so you know the man was moved by inspiration because it hadn't been written yet. And so, here while the world was waiting for God's Word to come into print by way of the Gospel accounts, by way of Luke's writing acts, and by way of Paul's epistles, what did God have to do to feed those believers? Gifted men. And so the gift of prophecy was indeed by far the most important, because that's all those early believers had to go on. And here he says they're going to fail. They're going to pass away. Why? Because the written Book is coming. And Paul evidently by inspiration knew that. That there was a time coming when the Word of God would be in print for the New Testament believer, even as the Old Testament was back then. Alright, move on to the next one. Prophecies shall fail and tongues. Now I guess here I'm going to have to put something on the board and it'll carry for all three of these chapters. And I'm going to do this just so that people can readily understand that in the Greek whenever you see the word tongues, plural, it always means a known language. A speakable, reducible to writing language. Now when you see the word in the singular, and we'll point this out as we go through the coming chapters, especially 14, when there is no plural, it's singular, then it speaks to that non-phonetic, and that's all they were, were sounds that no one could reduce to writing. And as even some of our, what shall I say, most gifted translators today, such as your Bible societies, the Wycliffe translators, whenever they have heard someone speak in one of these so-called unknown tongues, they have never been able to pick out a single phonetic sound that can be reduced to writing. Amazing, isn't it? And so they are unintelligible, and that's why Paul says that if they're going to use it, they have to have someone that can translate it, otherwise leave it alone. But whatever, we're going to leave that lie for the time being. And so now he says that this whole gift of speaking even in known languages, being able to speak in almost any language that would happen to come up. And Paul makes the statement in chapter 14, in fact you can look over, just cross the page in my Bible, look at I Corinthians 14, verse 18. Quite a statement. And he says, I thank my God I speak with tongues, plural, languages, more than you all. Now that was early in his ministry. Now from what we can gather, by the time he comes to the end of his ministry, he no longer practices it either. Now I can best explain this ability to speak in languages, as one of our guides, and we've been to Israel, and we're hoping to get him again when we go now next month. When we had finished our tour, and he had taken us to the airport, and the whole group that was with us just fell in love with the guy. And I asked him, I said, well now see Virgil's smiling, he remembered. And Louise, several of you were with us. And I said, now Eli, I said, what do you do from here? Well he says, I got a few days off, and then he says, I pick up another group from Italy. I said, Italy? I said, then what do you do? How do you communicate? Oh he said, I speak Italian. And I said, well what if the week after that a bunch of Japanese come? He said, no problem, I speak Japanese. Well he gave me his business card as we left, and when I got on the plane, I turned on the back side, and there he had it. The guy was fluent in seven languages. Fluent. He could take a tour from any one of those countries, and be able to converse with them as clearly as he did us. Now that's what it means to be able to speak in tongues, plural, as we see it here. And the guy had this, but it wasn't a supernatural gift. I imagine he had then a talent and an ability, but he still had to learn those various languages. But Paul, I think wherever he went in his missionary journeys, and he went into various tribes and dialects, he didn't have to stop and take six months to learn the language. He communicated with them. And even in Corinth, we'll pick this up in the following half hour, even in Corinth there was a multitude of languages being constantly used because it was the center of East and West trade. But whatever, Paul says the day is coming when this gift of being able to speak in a language such as he was able to do, would also disappear. Why? Because God's sovereign. You talk to any missionary that's gone to the mission field over the last as many years as you can remember, and have you ever found one that could go right into Brazil and speak Portuguese? Can they go to Argentina or wherever they use Portnoy's Brazil? Or if you go into Bolivia, and then all of a sudden be able to speak the languages of these Indian tribes? No. So what do they have to do? They have to spend months and years learning the language, because God has taken that whole thing away. It would be great if we didn't have to. Well, even when we were in Haiti, I would have given anything. The Irish would have too. If we could have just been able to communicate with those 700 Haitians who were out there in that crowd every night, plus the fact it went over island wide radio, if I could have spoke that whole week in either Creole or French, I'd have been satisfied with either one of them. But I couldn't. I had to go through an interpreter. And so Paul says that this whole gift of tongues is going to vanish, as well as the gift of prophecies. And even this supernatural knowledge that was given to men until the printed page came in, would disappear. Now you want to remember, God gave us this book, which is supernatural in itself. And He has written it in such a way, as one of the old Reformers put it, that every plow boy in England could read the Bible and comprehend it. And so this is why all these supernatural things are going to fade away, is that the Word, the printed Word, would now come in and take over. Well, I'm not going to have time to finish it, but we'll go as far as we can. Verse 9. Now what does in part mean? Partially. There's not a full knowledge revealed yet, and Paul understood that. That even with all of his revelations, he still did not have them all. There would be more coming, and we know now that it was. So he says, we know in part, and we prophesy, or we preach, partially. He still didn't have the whole revelation of the truth of the Gospel of Grace. This is only the beginning. Then verse 10. Now here again I have to use a simple illustration. We've used it before. Every one of you went through the grade school and learned your arithmetic, your plain and simple combinations of 2 plus 2 and 3 plus 3, the multiplication tables and so forth. How often do you still use them today? I mean as such, very rarely. But whatever mathematics you do use, what's it all based on? Those principles. I don't care how high you go in mathematics, 2 plus 2 is still 4, and 3 plus 3 is still 6. Now it's the same way with scriptural revelation. God starts with the simplistic, but He is constantly revealing deeper and deeper truths. Now that doesn't take away the simpler part, but what does it do? It puts it in a place where you're not constantly hashing it over. You don't have to. It's just simply part and parcel of your makeup. Let me show you a verse I think that points that out so clearly, and that would be in Hebrews chapter 6. Hebrews chapter 6, right there in verse 1. Now I'd like to wait until you've all found it, because people tell me out there in those living rooms they're doing the same thing, and they don't want me to go too fast. They say, slow it down so we can keep up. Alright, but now in Hebrews chapter 6 verse 1, just watch the language. In other words, up in chapter 5, He's been talking about getting off the baby bottle, and getting into the meat of the Word. Get away from the simplistic things. You don't throw them away. You don't say they're no longer true, but you don't need them anymore. So He says, Just like we leave grade school arithmetic, therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine, or the teachings of Christ, let us go on to maturity, or to that which is complete. Don't stay back there in the simplistic areas of Scripture. Move on into deeper water, deeper things. Now then, come back to I Corinthians 13. I've only got a few seconds left. So He says, That when that which is complete is come, then that which is only partial shall be what? Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick. A weekly Bible study. If you would like more information about the Les Feldick Ministries, a Bible study in your area, or about this program, write to Les Feldick Ministries, Ralph1, Box 760, Kinta, OK 74552. That's Ralph1, Box 760, Kinta, OK 74552. Through the Bible with Les Feldick is viewer supported, and your gift is appreciated. Thank you, and be sure to tune in next time, for Through the Bible with Les Feldick.