Did you ever wonder? Did you ever wonder?
I do. Did you ever wonder? Why the sun always rises, but the stars never fall? Why dry land is never satisfied by water? And why fire never says enough?
Enough. Note how much God is an attribute of the thing that we're describing. And just to reflect for a minute that 1 Corinthians 13 is the 13th chapter of, obviously, 1 Corinthians. Well, the 13th letter in the Hebrew alphabet is the letter Mem, and you may know that that very much means water. It's the beginning of the word Messiah, and in every way seems to point to Christ.
It's also the middle of the word Truth, and the word Truth in Hebrew is Aleph and a Mem and a Tav, meaning the beginning, the middle, and the end, because the Mem is right in the middle. And then, not coincidentally, I would point out that there are 13 verses in the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians, which I just find is just marvelous. So, moving on to the ones that I was looking at, that I've been looking at for the last few days, we've gotten down to verse 5, right near the end, is that love is not easily provoked, and then it thinketh no evil, and then in verse 6 it says, rejoice not in iniquity.
And so those are the three I want to take up for a minute today, and the first one being it's not easily provoked, and that, again, gets back to the idea of slow to anger or long suffering. And, you know, that is an amazing concept that, in other words, when we begin to rush into things, I heard this amazing podcast yesterday by Wild at Heart that talked about that hurry, when you feel hurried or you feel anxious, you are literally in agreement with a lie that God has not given you enough time to accomplish what you need to do that day. Well, you think about how much Jesus accomplished in 33 years, I always talk about that, or just the three years of his ministry, never appeared hurried, you know, clearly always had the amount of time that God gave him, and at the end of the book of John, this person pointed out, and I would too, that it says all the books would not contain all that Jesus did. So it didn't take a long time in order to accomplish a whole lot if God's in it. And again, like Prego spaghetti sauce, he's in there.
And if you feel hurried or you feel stressed or you feel anxious and you begin to get angry, guess what? God's not in that. That's not love. And so we're given this idea again that in order for it to be love, it requires that most important ingredient, God, and your connection with him, your unity with him.
So I love that. And then it thinketh no evil, right? And I love that idea of thinketh because that word that Paul uses here is the word that has to do with counted, like, and I understand it was one of Paul's most favorite words. He used it 27 times in the New Testament. I think it has to do with, you know, Abraham believed God and it was counted unto him as righteousness.
Right? And so God, he's counting righteousness. And so he doesn't sit there and account for evil, so to speak. In other words, he's not looking for that as he's looking across the horizon. He's looking for goodness and and those kind of things, jumping out at him and then helping those people that want to want to climb into that. And so, you know, when you think about it, it's so easy to criticize. Right?
And if you really want to run your kids down, it doesn't take long. But to look for the good is the opposite of this. And, you know, that whole idea is absolutely, you know, again, if you're out there looking for evil or, you know, that you're accounting evil, then that's not God.
He's not in that. And then moving on to verse six, along those same lines, it rejoices not in iniquity. And this particular version of iniquity, if you back into that from the Septuagint, because there are a lot of different words that are translated iniquity. But this particular iniquity is the same word as the word ein, which definitely means to look.
All right. And so if you wondered why you don't like to look at the news on TV, that's because you don't rejoice. God's not in that, man. I mean, God does not.
He turns his face from iniquity. Right. So if you if you find yourself being taken in by any time, that's why pornography is just absolutely, intensely horrible, because you're literally looking at iniquity. I mean, you're rejoicing in iniquity. It's it's a horrible, horrible, godless event.
Right. And the idea of of looking on goodness again, you know, God can't look at iniquity. So if you're anxious to look at some sin or somebody involved in something they shouldn't be involved in, or you you somehow or another rejoicing in the fact that they got involved in it, man, that ain't love. I mean, it's God's not in that. And it's like the prego spaghetti sauce answer.
He's just not in that. And so, you know, as we think about, wow, for me to get connected to love, clearly, I have to add the number one ingredient, which is God. Right. The Holy Spirit, the Father and the Son. However, that works out in your life that that you stay connected to God and connected to Jesus. And so if you start to feel angry, if you start to think, wow, I would like to see this person fall down or if if if if you are regarding accounting, somebody's evil, those those kind of things. God's not in that. And that's it's like a check engine light that's coming on in your car telling you, boop, boop, boop, you've lost your union with God.
You know, or, you know, you find yourself beset with that stuff. I've lost my union with God. God helped me get back in communion with you, you know, because, again, as we do those things, once again, we will find love as we will throughout his word. And that's why it's so critical, right, that that the word mercy ends with a meme, because in order to have mercy, you've got to have water. And that's the thing about Prager's spaghetti sauce. It has plenty of water and the water of his word will help us to stay connected. Thanks for listening.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-07-25 12:49:59 / 2023-07-25 12:53:00 / 3
