Faithbase

Good morning, welcome to thinking about the Bible and thinking about love as we continue this series. Today we get to verse 5 of chapter 13 in 1 Corinthians and we find that love is not rude. Now as I thought about this, I thought I would give you an example that's embarrassing. It's a true story and unfortunately it is myself that I'm talking about here. Here's an example of being rude. When I was dating my wife, before we were married, she and I were dating and we were out at a restaurant and I think as I recall we were some friends there and a song came over the overhead. They were playing music in the background and it was a Beach Boys tune and I leapt up and began to sing loudly and the entire restaurant could hear me and I don't recall all the reaction of all the people, but let me tell you something, that was rude. That was not loving. I was showing off for my girlfriend, I know, I know, youthful exuberance, we can chalk it up to something like that, but it was rude. It was not a loving thing to do because when we think about love, remember we're not talking about just our girlfriend or our spouse or whoever, we're talking about all of humanity. That sounds a little bit crazy sometimes, but let's face it, the Samaritan, the parable of the good Samaritan I should say, reminds us that all of humanity is our neighbor and so every person in that restaurant deserved my love to be shown to them and in this case would be to not be rude. I'm not going to go to each one of them and give them a hug and a kiss or whatever. That's not what we're talking about here. Again, that's part of our problem in the United States of America and indeed the world today is that we think of love in some of these physical, even erotic way or whatever, but in this case, as we read through 1 Corinthians 13, we are reminded that love is far more than that. It is the doing what's most beneficial for the other person, even at great cost to ourselves. My example, there's too many embarrassing examples from my youth like that, but that example of being rude in that restaurant is an example of not being loving. The loving thing to do would have been to keep my mouth shut and just not show off for my wife or my girlfriend at the time like that and to allow the rest of the people in the restaurant to have a nice quiet meal with their guests. So I want you to think about that today. You don't need to worry. Hopefully you're not going to go out and start singing in public and bothering people unless maybe that's your job, that's what you do, but what I'm saying is love is not rude. It does not impose upon other people our behavior simply because we're showing off or whatever the reason might be. Use that example and think in your own life. Think of ways that you can show love by not being rude as we think about love this morning and throughout the week. Thanks for being here today. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. May God bless you.