Capturing Love's Attention

Don't repeat it. Don't watch it. Don't look at it. Don't read it.

If it has anything to do with sin, in secret, have nothing to do with it. Imagine applying that standard to our lives. How many movies would you have to walk out of? How many TV shows could you watch? How many songs could you listen to on your favorite radio station? Frankly, when we understand that Paul's statement reflects such a high standard, that the American church has so abandoned that if we saw somebody attempting to apply that high standard, we'd think they were out of touch with reality. What kind of things do you take delight in?

What would your television viewing habits reveal about the true answer to that question? How about the websites that you visit or the way you spend your money? How about your feelings toward other people? Do you ever take delight in something bad happening to someone else? This is Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. Stephen's in a series about love from 1 Corinthians 13 called True Love. In today's lesson, we're going to learn what true love delights in. Today's message is entitled Capturing Love's Attention. Stay with us. It has been said that a person's true character is revealed in what makes him laugh and in what makes him weep.

There's probably a lot of truth to that. What is it that causes you to rejoice? In fact, take five, ten seconds here and think about the last time you laughed. What was it about? Was it a joke somebody told at the office? Was it some scene on television?

Was it something you read? What puts wind into your sails? What do you get really excited about? When somebody bumps into you, you're going to talk about this, whatever it happens to be. It might be the weather. It might be some current event. It might be the upcoming game next Sunday between Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. What do you get excited about?

Take another five seconds or so and try to recall when the last time it was when you were really sad. What brought it about? What was it that upset you? See, for the believer, we ought to be challenged with the question, what is it that captivates our interest? What do we get excited about? What is it that brings a laugh or a tear to our face?

What captures our emotions? True love is not interested in the gutter. True love does not live off salacious news. It does not long for the latest juicy bit of sin or sacrilege. Let me have it.

Give it to me quick. What Paul does next in 1 Corinthians 13, if we'll turn there if you haven't already, is he describes genuine, lofty, godlike agape. This is love that imitates Christ. He will reveal to us what captures true love's attention.

Notice verse 6 where we find our place tonight. Love, he's speaking of agape, does not rejoice in sin, unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth. You could translate this, love does not delight in anything wrong, off color, dirty, sinful. To delight in wrong, what does that mean? To delight in wrongdoing, to delight in sin is to respond to sin in at least two or three different ways.

Let me give them to you. First, to delight in sin is to enjoy sinful actions in others. Now it's easy for all of us to say, of course I don't delight in sin, I'm in church tonight. I have a love for Christ, I have a love for holiness, I want nothing more than righteousness to win the day and then go home and watch a program that promotes and encourages and describes evil in such a way that you find yourself kind of cheering it on. You land on the side of the one in sin. See, here's the problem. We are so exposed that I think we're dulled or blunted, but sin is sin. We desensitize ourselves by our exposure to things that laugh at or promote fornication and immoral things that exalt money, materialism, and crime. See, here's the challenge of agape.

How's this for a radical challenge? When we allow ourselves to be entertained by things promoting sin, we are rejoicing in unrighteousness, whether we like to admit it or not. Let me read that again. When we allow ourselves to be entertained by things promoting sin, we are rejoicing in unrighteousness.

Let me tell you how far we've come in the wrong direction. Paul wrote to the Ephesians in chapter 5 verse 8, Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth. Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness.

And you say, well, I don't do that. Well, the word for participate is the same word that we know very readily as we talk about Christian fellowship. It's the word koinonia.

Don't have any koinonia with the deeds of darkness. It simply means to come alongside. It means to have a part in. Don't participate or even come alongside deeds of darkness is what Paul is saying. He goes on to say in verse 12, For it is disgraceful, listen to this, it is disgraceful even to talk of the sinful things which are done in secret. Paul refers to these secret deeds as shameful.

Here in this text, the same word is translated filthy in Titus 1-11. Imagine this as a standard for genuine love. Don't have anything to do with shameful deeds done by the disobedient in secret. Don't repeat it, don't watch it, don't look at it, don't read it.

If it has anything to do with sin, in secret, have nothing to do with it. Imagine applying that standard to our lives. How many movies would you have to walk out of? How many TV shows could you watch? How many songs could you listen to on your favorite radio station? How many videos on YouTube could you look at?

How long would you be able to listen to talk radio on Monday morning? The average Christian would never consider that they are happy about sin. I am not rejoicing in unrighteousness. Frankly, when we understand that Paul's statement reflects such a high standard that the American church has so abandoned that if we saw somebody attempting to apply that text and that high standard, we'd think they were out of touch with reality. We'd think they're a Pharisee.

We'd think they're a prude. If you really want to love God with genuine love and you want to love one another with genuine love, Paul says you won't allow any attachment or willing pleasure in sinful things. So to rejoice in unrighteousness is to take delight in the sinful actions of others. Secondly, to delight in sin is to applaud sinful behavior in others.

It's kind of obvious, right? Since sin is offensive to God, we should never applaud or approve of anything that is offensive or grievous to God. Listen, when we delight in sin, when we cherish and participate in sin, we are delighting in that which offends our Heavenly Father.

It brought about the death of his Son. It dishonors and grieves the Holy Spirit. When we enjoy sin and justify sin and applaud sin and approve of sin, either in our life or in the lives of others, we prove insensitivity and an utter lack of true love for God. According to Paul, the approval of sin is the final evidence of a culture's corruption and irreversible condition. In Romans 1, Paul catalogs a downward digression of a culture and their refusal to accept the creative handiwork of God.

We talked about that earlier today. Furthermore, in that chapter, they plunge into moral and sexual deviancy in their bisexuality and their homosexual lusts. They're filled, Paul wrote in verse 28, with all kinds of unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, and evil. At the end of the paragraph, he writes this, without understanding, they are untrustworthy, they are, here's the word, unloving.

Unloving. Although they know the ordinance of God that those who practice, and he had listed a whole lot of sins there, those who practice such things are worthy of death, here it is, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them. In other words, Paul talks about those who not only practice sexual immorality, both heterosexual and homosexual, but they go one more step further in giving hearty approval to those who practice them. Can you imagine what this means today about our culture? The hearty approval of sexual deviancy to the degree that the school system now in this country, the public school system not only allows but encourages children, as it did last year, to hold a moment of silence in honor of the homosexual and lesbian community. It's now an annual event.

When I found out about it last year, I got up and encouraged our kids to, on that particular day, go around and talk as much as they possibly could. Can you imagine what this says then about our leaders in this election year? Presidential candidates who, in this election year, have made it clear that homosexual couples should have every right and privilege of married couples, and they are scrambling to make sure they are on record of approving of what God disapproves of. So John the Apostle, who wrote during the days when the Roman Empire glorified sexual experimentation, in fact, you ought to just go back and read history, where the elite Roman citizens considered bisexuality balance. Heterosexuality was considered prudish, which is becoming all the more popular in our day. You can now watch a television show where a woman, a bisexual woman, is choosing her lover from among a group of young men and young women who are all vying for her attention, and she's going to make her choice. John was writing to Christians who lived in a day like ours.

In fact, his was far worse, but we're catching up. In the first century, believers lived under the leadership of men like Nero who publicly married men and women. They lived when the foundation of the home and virtue was literally being dismantled and dissolved through repeated serial divorce and adultery. John wrote to this generation, little children, make sure no one deceives you. The one who practices righteousness is righteous. The one who practices sin, and the key word is practice, who loves it, follows after it, longs for it, wants it. Who practices sin is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning, 1 John 3, 4-6.

This is not necessarily the politically correct message for our culture today, but it is the truth. When a culture arrives at the point where Isaiah said, people will call evil things good and good things evil, Isaiah 5-2, John wrote, don't be deceived. The standard of God's holiness is not shifted. Right is still right and wrong is still wrong, according to the inspired record of God's truth. To applaud unrighteousness does not make unrighteousness right.

To denigrate and scoff at purity doesn't make purity wrong. If we love God and we love others, we will not practice sin. We won't wave sin under anybody's nose. We won't offer them a bite of sin. We won't keep sin around the house. We won't pack it in their lunch.

We're not going to start on the computer. We will confess sin, be grieved over sin, fleece sin, and hate sin. If anything, the church needs to be revived today in its holy aversion to sin. In fact, according to 1 Corinthians 13, you can't really love God without a disdain for sin because you don't rejoice in it, what Paul is saying. Have you ever heard of a man proposing to his girlfriend, sweetheart, I want you to marry me because I love you and three other girls.

I hope you don't mind if I keep seeing them. No, true love decides to abandon any other affection, like that. It will have a disdain for any affection that would possibly get in the way of affection for the beloved. This is what Paul is saying here. You can't have true love for God and your three favorite sins too.

It's him or them. John says, don't be deceived into thinking God will happily go along with our unrepentant sin. If we love him, we will not rejoice in unrighteousness because we will recognize it grieves God.

Paul describes true love. He says true love isn't captivated by sin. It doesn't rejoice in sin. In other words, it doesn't enjoy sinful things. Secondly, it doesn't applaud sinful behavior.

One more, thirdly, it doesn't delight in repeating sinful deeds. I agree with one commentary on this text as this man wrote, one of the most common forms of rejoicing in sin is gossip. And you say, no, Stephen, you're meddling, you know.

Well, I am. Gossips would do little harm, though, he writes, if they did not have so many eager listeners. This sin, which many Christians treat lightly, is wicked, not only because it uncarely reveals the weaknesses or sins of others, and therefore hurts rather than helps, but because the heart of gossip is rejoicing in evil. The essence of gossip is gloating over the shortcomings or sins of others, which makes gossip then a sin itself. See, we would say we don't rejoice in evil. What is it about our nature that loves to hear stuff that starts with the words, hey, have you heard?

You just lean in closer. No, I haven't. Have you heard? And it's never followed up with, he's reading his Bible through in a whole year.

He started praying on the way to work. She's a great mom. Have you heard the latest answer to one of her prayers? Wait till you hear this.

That isn't going to travel. It's a strange trait, Barclay wrote, of human nature, that we prefer to hear the misfortune of others rather than their good fortune. If we truly love each other, then Paul is coming right down to where we live. And a phrase that, when I first looked at it, I thought, we're not going to have much trouble with this one. But when you look at what it means, it means we will not take pleasure in the faults and failures of others. In fact, Peter, a love covers a multitude of what? Sins. A gossip does what? Uncovers a multitude of sins.

The truth is we delight in gossip, not only because of our corrupt hearts, but because it makes us all feel a little better, a little more superior, than this other person who fell or failed, with what devastating results. An anonymous author wrote these words, I have no respect for justice. I maim without killing. I break hearts and ruin lives. I am cunning and malicious and gather strength.

The older I am alive. My victims are helpless. They can't protect themselves against me because I have no name, no face.

To track me down is impossible. The harder you try, the more elusive I become. I topple governments. I wreck friendships. I ruin careers and cause sleepless nights. I make innocent people cry. I make headlines. I make headaches. Even my name hisses. I am called gossip.

And I am nobody's friend. True love is a refusal to rejoice in unrighteousness. It doesn't enjoy sinful or unfortunate actions in others. It doesn't applaud sinful or unfortunate behavior in others. It doesn't delight in repeating sinful or unfortunate news of others.

Let me quickly flip the coin over, as Paul does here in this one text. We'll get through this verse tonight. He says, love, on the other hand, rejoices with what? The truth.

The truth. If you put these two concepts together, you could translate verse six. Love does not delight in anything that's wrong.

It delights in everything that is right. Leon Morris paraphrases, love is happy wherever the truth is. The apostle Paul referred to the truth in a variety of ways. He referred to the truth of God, Romans 3.7. He said Christ is the minister of truth, 2 Corinthians 6.7. He refers to the truth of the gospel, Galatians 2.5. We're told the unbeliever suppresses the truth of creation, Romans 1.18. The unbeliever exchanges the truth for a lie that nature is to be revered and worshiped, Romans 1.25. Paul challenges the believer to submit to the truth, even when it's uncomfortable, Galatians chapter 4, verse 6, where Paul writes, listen to this, have I become your enemy by telling you the truth? In other words, when Paul writes here in 1 Corinthians 13 that love is rejoicing with the truth, he sees love as deeply concerned with the advancement of the gospel and everything related to the pure and holy reputation of Jesus Christ. If you truly love someone, you're going to desire that they walk with Christ and that they honor Christ according to the truth of Christ. In a very practical way then, the guy that tells his girlfriend, if you love me, you will give yourself to me, doesn't really love her, because he's asking her to abandon the truth.

The guy who says, I love God, but I really don't care about sharing the gospel with anybody is deceived. That's like saying, listen, I love my wife and children, but I really don't ever want to talk about them. And I don't ever want them to come up in conversation if you please. My wife and my children are a private matter. It's just for me.

Oh no. Let me show you some pictures. Let me tell you how old they are.

Let me tell you what's going on in their lives. To truly love the truth is to walk in the truth, talk about the truth, and be interested in the truth, rather than to be captivated with stuff like that. The apostle John wrote to a friend named Gaius, just listen and notice how often the word truth comes up. For I rejoice greatly when the brothers came and testified to your truth, as indeed you are walking in the truth. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth. See, true love is grieved when people follow after lies, and it rejoices when they follow after the truth, when they follow after Christ, when they seek to surrender to the Spirit of God, the one who truly loves them will encourage them onward and forward.

True love pursues and longs for and applies and lives for the truth. Let me close by reading a letter written by a woman in her 50s. She has chosen to walk in the truth of God's word and genuinely love her husband, despite unique challenges.

Every day this woman rejects decisions that would be unrighteous and she chooses to walk in the truth. She writes, I met him when I was 19, married him at 20. We were separated when I turned 22 because he was arrested and convicted of a violent crime. He had failed himself, his family, his wife, and his future, but he was my husband. I was sad. I was disappointed, mad, and frightened. But I stayed with him through weeks of trials, his years in jail, and now decades in prison.

Why? I believe in the covenant of marriage and in God before whom we stood as we took our vows. I am now 50. He is 55. I see him four hours every weekend.

I talk to him on the phone twice a week for 20 minutes. I'm not deceived or a martyr. I'm not uneducated or desperate. I'm a wife. I work, have a mortgage, a nine-year-old car, two dogs and bills just like everyone else. It's hard sometimes to imagine that I am only one wife of over two million men behind bars. I've not made many friends at the prison, but this is the decision that I've made. Somewhere in here, I think I'm supposed to say I believe my husband is innocent, that the system didn't work, that we're victims of whatever, but that isn't the point.

Yes, I get angry at the situation. I've grieved the loss of many of the normal things others have done like having children and vacations abroad. This is not the life I would have expected for myself 30 years ago, and it isn't one I recommend to others, but it is my life. At 50, I have come to the conclusion it is not the life I have that defines me. It is the way I choose to live that life.

I choose to live it being faithful. Wow. You are not going to find this woman's story in one of these.

You know, it's never going to happen. It isn't anywhere near as exciting as when Jen told Brad, I hate you, and a guy who flees at rehab and gets drunk. But then again, the world is not captivated by the demonstrations of agape, are they? But we as the followers of Jesus Christ should be captivated by true love.

And how do you know if you are? You won't applaud or pursue or repeat anything having to do with sin. You will applaud and pursue everything having to do with the truth. That is true love. Thanks for listening today. This lesson on what true love delights in was helpful to you. This is Wisdom for the Heart with pastor and author Stephen Davey. Today's lesson was called Capturing Love's Attention.

We have one more lesson to go in this series, and we'll bring you that next time. Before we go today, I hope you'll be as encouraged as we were to hear from Gloria, who lives in Virginia. She wrote to say, It is truly impossible for me to express how abundantly blessed I am from your ministry. I try to tune in every morning, and it disheartens me when my routine has to change and I miss the broadcast. It is sheer joy to tune in mornings as I commute to work. I also share your teachings with others, and I thank the Lord for allowing you to speak directly to many on a daily basis as you possess a remarkable gift of explaining God's Word. Well, thanks, Gloria. And Gloria, I want you and everyone to know that when your routine changes and you miss our broadcast on the radio, there are two ways that you can go back and listen. Each day's lesson, as well as the complete archive of Stephen's 35 years of Bible teaching, are posted to our website, wisdomonline.org. You can also install the Wisdom International app to your phone or tablet. It's all on the app as well. Thanks for listening, and join us next time for more wisdom for the heart.