Faith, Love and Hope - Part 2

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. That's how important the labor of love is. You see, that's how important this idea is, the labor of love.

It's that important. Jesus even took it a step further and makes us uncomfortable. I not only have to love God and I have to love you and I have to love the lost, but I also have to love my enemies.

Now that's just going too far. You see, that's the supernatural love of Christ. While we were still enmity with God, his enemy, God loved us so much he sent his son into the world. This is the love of God.

That's what he's talking about. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana.

Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world. If Thessalonica is the best church in the New Testament, the worst church in the New Testament by a mile is Corinth. It's a terrible church. If you could do something wrong as a church, the Corinthians did it wrong. Everything you could do wrong, they did wrong all the way through the book. But you know what is they completely lacked that made everything go wrong in their church? They didn't love each other. They didn't love people. They were proudful and arrogant.

You see, that was their problem. Again, you can hold your place and go to 1 Corinthians 13. The Corinthians had great wealth. It was a large church.

They had big numbers. And they were carnal, fleshly, weak, childish. When he said they're carnal, Paul said to them, you know, when I look at your lives and I look at the life of an unbeliever pagan Greek, it's the same.

I can't see any difference in you at all. But they had all the gifts. In fact, they completely wrecked their church with the way they viewed the gifts. So Paul's writing in that section about the gifts. And he says, look, you people don't understand something. You think that if you had a certain gift, you'd be spiritual.

You see, and in our case, it was gloss layer tongues. If you had a gift that made you spiritual. Absolutely not. You see, he said that has nothing to do with spirituality.

So he gets to Chapter 13. He says this. If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels. Now, please understand everything he said is hyperbole. I've actually heard some guy say, you know, I I know now that gloss layer meant you spoke like angel speak.

That's not what he's saying at all. He's saying, but even if I could speak like an angel speaks, if I had an angel language, watch if I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but I do not have love, I become a noisy gong or a clinging simple symbol. All I make is noise. That's all I do, I just make noise.

That's all I do. There's no there's nothing coming here if I don't have love, I don't have anything else. Even if you speak our language and you don't have love, you don't have anything else but noise.

And neither do I. You see, that's what Paul is saying next. He goes on if I have the gift of prophecy, now watch the hyperbole and know all mysteries and all knowledge. Now, who knows all mysteries and all knowledge?

Only God. So he's not saying, hey, if you have the gift of prophecy, you know everything. He's not saying that he choose an hyperbole. He said, if I have all faith, notice faith so as to remove mountains. Now, I love that because remember in Scripture, even Jesus said, if you had enough faith, you could move a mountain. Paul says, I'll take it a step further. If you have enough faith, in my example, you can remove the mountain.

I have faith that mountain's gone and it vanishes. Now, you and I would say, wow, that's really something. Paul said, yeah, if I had faith that could do that, but do not have love, I'm nothing. You see, absolutely nothing, not a little, I'm nothing. He then says, if I give all my possessions to feed the poor and I surrender my body to be burned, but I don't have love, it profits me nothing. No matter how much I do for people, no matter how much I work, if I don't have love, it doesn't profit me at all. That's how important the labor of love is. And then Paul says this, now notice the context in which Paul said it, and you and I, and I got to say I do it too.

But you and I, when do you often hear this? At a wedding, man. This is for the bride and groom. This isn't for the bride and groom. This is for you and me.

This is for the church. You see, that's what he's saying. Love is patient. Love is kind. It's not jealous.

Love does not brag. It's not arrogant. It does not act unbecomingly, does not seek its own. It's not provoked.

It does not take into account a wrong suffered. It does not rejoice in unrighteousness. It rejoices in the truth.

Love bears all things. Love believes all things. Love hopes all things. Love endures all things.

Love never fails. That's how important that was to Paul. You see, that's what love is, and the Corinthians didn't have any of it. Even back in chapter 11, when they had the Lord's table and the agape feast on Sunday evenings, there was no love. So they knew that all of the poor people and the slaves couldn't come till Sunday evening.

They'd come late because they had to work. So those people who were the haves versus the have-nots, they'd get together, have the agape feast together, and do the Lord's table before the other people got there so they could eat all the food. Now, Paul says when you do the Lord's table that way, that's why many of you are sick, and some of you sleep, which means you've been killed by the Lord, sin unto death. They had no love at all. That's what this church did. They didn't have a labor of love.

Now, we can go back to Thessalonians. Jesus Christ was asked by his enemies trying to trap him. He summarized the whole Testament, but if you could come up with one law that's greater than the others, what would it be?

They thought he would say, well, you can't do that. Jesus said, that's not a problem. You'll love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. You'll love your neighbor as yourself.

He said, everything is inside of that. That's how important the labor of love is. You see, that's how important this idea is, the labor of love.

It's that important. Jesus even took it a step further and makes us uncomfortable. I not only have to love God, and I have to love you, and I have to love the lost, but I also have to love my enemies.

Now, that's just going too far, isn't it? You see, that's the supernatural love of Christ. While we were still enmity with God, his enemy, God loved us so much, he sent his Son into the world. This is the love of God.

That's what he's talking about. Paul said later in another scripture, the love of Christ controls me. I do what I do because of the love of Christ.

So he says, you have the work of faith, you have the labor, you have to the point of exhaustion, you consider other people as better than you. You demonstrate it by the way you love them. Do you demonstrate it? Do you demonstrate this love to people?

You see, do we do it collectively, but do you do it? That's important for us because God's evaluation of you is different than you think. God doesn't think you're a mature Christian because you spend 15 minutes every morning reading your way through scripture. He doesn't think you're a mature Christian because you have a perfect attendance. You see, that kind of thing is not how God evaluates you. He's going to evaluate you by the deeds of your faith, by the labor of your love. You see, that's what he wants to know. What are you really doing?

Not what you're learning, what are you doing with it? And then thirdly, he said, and the steadfastness of hope. The steadfastness of hope, that word steadfastness is different. See, steadfastness to us means it's steady, but that's not exactly what steadfastness means in Greek.

The word is hupomone. It's a compound Greek word, and it means in this sense to stay under the pressure. Whatever pressure is being put on you, you just stay there.

That's steadfastness. He said, you stay under the pressure of hope. Ellipsis is the word hope, and I've told you this over the years. That word hope doesn't mean cross your fingers and hope. Okay, that word hope means a future certitude.

This is a future certitude, something I know is going to happen. We try so hard to build that into your lives. That's why, and I admit it ad nauseam, I've said to you over the years, the worst thing that can happen to you can't happen to you. Okay, why? Hope. I tell you, I read the end of the book, you win.

See, why? Because of hope. I want you to have that steadfastness of hope because there's something I know. You are sinful people living in a cursed world, and I hate to say it, but pain and suffering are either with you now or they're going to be there soon.

It's part of life. None of us are going to get out of here alive. You see, barring the Lord's return. And so in order to encounter life the way it is, I need a steadfastness of hope. The Bible emphasizes this point so much.

I was just looking through some scriptures in the New Testament. Here we have the steadfastness of hope. In chapter 5, the hope of salvation, Colossians 1, the hope laid up for you. Ephesians 1, that you may know what is the hope of his calling. 1 Peter 1, hope in God. Hebrews 10, hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering. 1 Timothy 1, Christ Jesus who is our hope. 1 Timothy 4 10, we fix our hope on the living God. 1 Timothy 6 17, do not fix our hope on the uncertainty of riches but on God. Titus 1, hope of eternal life. Titus 2 13, looking for the blessed hope of his coming. 1 Peter 1, born again to a living hope. Then Peter also writes, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Hope.

All the time, hope. See, Paul knows this church is under persecution. Now, we're not really under persecution here but when you are, it's not pleasant.

Okay, economically it's disastrous, people shut off relationships from you, you will be arrested for no reason here. There's all kinds of persecution and they need to have that kind of hope. Even from a physical point of view of punishment or illness. Remember what Paul called them because he had the hope? He called all the terrible things that happened to him momentary light afflictions.

How can he say that? When I compare it to the hope that's ahead of me. You see, when I compare it to the hope that's ahead of me, it's momentary light afflictions. That's the way Paul saw it. If you saw Paul in heaven and you said, wow, all the way at the end when they beheaded you, Paul, what do you think of that? That was just a momentary light affliction.

It didn't mean much to me. I have this hope. You see, and then he says, that's how I measure you, the steadfastness of your hope. As I said last week, these last couple of weeks, we've dealt with death in our church, more deaths than normal. One of the things that is most amazing in some of these cases was that knowing the individual who died and knowing the family who remained. One of the most important blessings I got from them, from both those who died and those who remained, was their hope. Yeah, they had sorrow.

There's a time to mourn. They had hope. They were positive. Even the people who died were positive. They believed with all their heart, theirs, their faith, absent from the body, present with the Lord.

A place of no more sorrow, no more tears. They believed it. And so when they were at death's door, they had hope. You see, this is important to us to have this. And God says, that's one of the ways I measure you. So he says, bearing in mind your work of faith, your labor of love and the steadfastness of your hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.

So the questions that I have for you personally are this. Do you evidence the work of faith? Does your faith work? And I don't mean on Sunday morning, singing a nice modern praise song. I mean, if I ask you right now as a congregation, raise your hand if you believe this is true.

And it's going to be scripture so you know what you're going to do. But, you know, all things work together for good. Yeah, I believe that, man.

We all believe it. And something terrible happens in your life. Pastor, how could this happen to me? What is God doing? I thought you believed all things work together for the good. Well, not now.

It's terrible. You see, as long as it's good, I believe that that's not faith. You see, that's not faith.

That's just reality. Faith is when you don't know why and you don't know how long you say, look, I trust in him. He is sovereign.

He is good. And it all works together for his good. That's my faith. Do you evidence that kind of faith in your life? What will you endure for your faith in Christ? See, what are you willing to endure? That's the test of our faith.

We've said that before. Do I practice the labor of love? Do I sacrificially demonstrate my love toward other people?

Do I do that? Not just saying I love them. I mean, do you sacrificially do things for them? Do I consider their life as more important than mine?

That's a big question. And thirdly, do I have steadfast hope when life my life becomes basically overwhelmingly difficult? And by the way, when your life becomes overly difficult, if you want to know if you have hope, it's real easy. Do you have peace? You don't have peace, you don't have hope. You see, that's the way this works.

That's what you have to ask yourself. So God measures us by faith and love and hope. The amount that you have in your life is the sign of your spiritual maturity. How prevalent it is in our church is the sign of the health of our church.

Now, I know what you might be thinking. Wait a minute, you drew all these conclusions out of one verse? I mean, just one verse in the Bible and then this is how we measure ourselves?

Not exactly. It shows up a few more times. First, go with me to Ephesians chapter one. Ephesians chapter one.

Paul writing to the Church of Ephesus, verse 15. He says this, For this reason I too, having heard of the faith, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which exists among you, and your love for all the saints, there's faith and love. He said, Do not cease giving thanks to you while making mention of you in my prayers. The same thing he said to the Thessalonians, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you will know what is the hope of his calling. So he says to the Ephesians, Look, I know you have faith, and I know you have love, and I'm praying that you have hope.

You see, that's what I'm praying. The same thing he said to the Thessalonians. A few pages to write, go with me to Colossians chapter one, verse three. Colossians chapter one and verse three. Right after he makes the introduction, Paul says this, We give thanks to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Again, praying always for you, same thing. He says, Since we heard, that's the reputation now, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love that which you have for all the saints because of the hope, he says, laid up for you in heaven, he said, of which you previously heard in the truth, the gospel. Your faith, your love, your hope. One last one, Peter. First Peter chapter one, verse 20. First Peter chapter one and verse 20. Speaking of Christ and his great redemptive work in 17, 18, and 19, Peter picks it up in verse 20, and he said is concerning Jesus. For he, Jesus, was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you, who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory so that your faith and hope are in God. He says, Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart. Work of faith, labor of love, steadfastness of hope. That's what the word of God says, over and over and over again.

So let me conclude by how I started. So I asked myself, do we as a church evidence the work of faith, the labor of love, and the steadfastness of hope? Because, by the way, that's the only evaluation that's going to matter in this church.

You know, I've learned that years and years and years ago. I can still remember a whole room of pastors, John MacArthur making a statement, and it kind of shook them, but he said, Let me be as honest as I can. I don't care what my people think.

It doesn't matter. All that's going to matter is when I stand before the judgment seat of Christ, what does he think? He said, People could love you, and Christ could be really disappointed in you. And I believe that with all my heart. So I asked myself, Do we do that? And I believe, as your pastor, we do. Not nearly as much as we can. I understand that.

But we clearly do. Your love for Christ and for people has been evident to me over the years. People have need, and you meet it. You see, that's important to me. And the amount of hope and certitude that the people in this church have shown facing extremely difficult circumstances financially, relationally, and from health point of views. I have been really encouraged to see that as a pastor. And so that's the only evaluation I think is going to matter at all in the long run in this church.

But that's different. I know collectively what I think of you. We evidence faith, hope, and love. But I don't know you individually well enough to do.

But you do. So I ask you the question. Ask yourself, Do I evidence a work of faith? Do I evidence a labor of love for everyone? Do I evidence a steadfastness of hope?

Let's pray. Father, we're always more comfortable with evaluating a church or our own lives with some kind of criteria that we make up. And if we satisfy ourselves, we believe that'll do it. But Father, that is simply not so. The only evaluation of our church and the only evaluation of our spiritual lives is you.

Certainly not us. And we have to ask ourselves after seeing it in your word, what is the evidence we have in our personal lives individually and then collectively for faith and love and hope? Father, this is such an important thing for us. So often we call ourselves disciples because we love to learn. But if we don't take that learning and apply it to our lives, you see, if we don't have the deeds, the ergon, the works to back up what we've learned, if we don't have the conviction to love others sacrificially and we don't have the kind of endurance and perseverance that means to endure in hope, then that knowledge doesn't help us at all.

In fact, it may give us a false sense of our own maturity. Father, I pray that all of us understand that we need to continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ which will show up in the amount of faith and love and hope we demonstrate. This we pray for our good and your glory in Christ's name.

Amen. You've been listening to Pastor Bill Gebhardt on the Radio Ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts or maybe you would just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called oneplace.com. That's oneplace.com and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online.

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