Admonition Podcast

Aaron, just led us in the song, Have Thine Own Way, Lord.

Have Thine Own Way.

I am the potter, Thou art the potter, I am the clay.

It's a beautiful song that shows the fact that our lives, what we do, the things we say,
what we think, it should all be modeled off of God, off of what He desires.

But we have a world that has a different focus, a world that is oftentimes focused on
self.

Toby Keith said it well when he said, I want to think about me.

I want to think about I.

I want to talk about number one, oh my me my.

What I think, what I like, what I know, what I want, what I see.

I like talking about you, you, you, you, you, usually.

But occasionally, I want to talk about me.

He saw selfishness in this relationship, or at least the writer of the song did, and said,
you know what?

I see the selfishness where we're always talking about you.

I want to talk about me every now and then.

He thought that the antidote, the thing that was needed in the relationship was a chance
for him to be selfish instead of the other person.

But what is it that God has to say?

Now in our world we see selfishness easily.

The way that our dictionaries define it, it's someone that cares too much of self.

Someone who sees his desires or his impulses as greater than anyone else's.

Let's take a look at Scripture and see how God defines it.

Now at least in our King James versions the word selfishness doesn't actually appear, but
the idea does.

And how do we best understand it?

Well, let's understand selfishness based on its opposite.

And that opposite is what is from God.

Matthew 22 verses 37 through 39 give the greatest commandment.

Matthew 22, 37 through 39.

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy
soul, and with all thy mind.

This is the first and great commandment.

And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

This is the greatest commandment because everything else relies on this.

Now, what we want to focus on is this word love.

And we often hear about agape.

We even hear about it being a selfless love.

Let's take a look at it more deeply.

Usually we look at this word and we think deeply affection, but if we look at the verb
form when it's in an action, those definitions show the idea of value, of setting store

upon something, looking at something for what it is worth.

Christ says, thou shalt agape, this word, thou shalt agape love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart.

you will look at the Lord and say, love you because of your value.

Any decision you make, you make because it's worth it to you.

I love you because you're worth it.

That is the love that we are to have for God, and it's the love that He has for us.

Now, what this love is going to do is shown throughout Scripture.

Christ was willing to give His life, John 3, 16.

In addition, 1 Corinthians 13 describes how this love is going to act.

And if we had time to look through all of it at this moment, we would see that every
single one of the aspects of love, the fact that it doesn't think any evil, the fact it

doesn't puff itself up, the fact it doesn't vaunt itself, all of these things are the
exact opposite of what we would consider selfishness.

We can conclude that the love God has for us and the love we are to have for God is the
exact opposite of this kind of selfishness.

Now.

We see selfishness, but now we can also see what is at its heart.

And there is no way in which we can serve God if we do not have this kind of love within
us.

He who does not love, who does not have this agape love, does not know God.

Now it's also dangerous because this selfishness is at the very heart of the sin that
plagues our world.

Agape is when I look at someone else and say, love you because you're worth it, because I
see your value.

Selfishness says, I am more valuable than anyone else.

What I desire, what I think, what I want to follow, that comes before God.

That becomes before anyone else that I see.

And now with that, selfishness in and of its very nature leads to sin.

Sin follows my desires.

James 1, 14, before that,

James 1, 13 and 14, let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God.

For God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man.

But every man is tempted when he is drawn away of what?

His own lusts and enticed.

He's not drawn away from his brother or sister's lust.

He's not drawn away from what someone else desires.

He's drawn away of what he wants to do.

When what he desires,

is worth his decisions before anything else, before his God or before anyone.

That is when he is led into sin.

Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed.

Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin, and sin when it is finished bringeth
forth death.

This selfishness leads directly to sin in that it follows my wants, and also it follows my
own way.

If you will turn to Isaiah 55 for just a moment.

Isaiah 55.

in this book of prophecy regarding punishment and coming redemption and a chance to come
back to the Lord.

Isaiah 55 verses 6 through 9, Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him
while he is near.

Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts.

And let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he
will abundantly pardon."

My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my
thoughts than your thoughts." We live in a world of humanism, a world where so many want

to practice doctrines that say what man thinks comes above anything, what anyone else
does.

It happens in religion where we follow man who say, I want to do, that comes before God.

We're going to write a creed.

And then there are those who want to totally be absent from what the Lord says so they can
follow their own ideologies, their own philosophies.

Now the Lord says, your thoughts are not my thoughts, your ways are not my ways.

Does that mean they can never be?

Is this saying, I am so great and you are down here, then there is no way you can ever
think the way God thinks.

Is that the point here?

He says, let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous his thoughts.

Why?

It's because your thoughts are not my thoughts.

Your ways are not my ways.

The point is, they should have been.

Their thoughts should have been God's thoughts.

Their ways should have been his ways.

Now there are aspects of God that we are never going to have.

We are never going to be, from what we understand, we're not going to have the all-knowing
nature that he has, or infinite power.

But there are things about God that we can emulate.

But when we decide we don't want to follow His word, we do not want to emulate the
characteristics of God, it is because we desire to follow our own way instead.

Let the wicked forsake His way.

This selfishness, we saw that it follows someone's own wants, their own desires, but also
it follows someone's own way of thinking.

It might be that it's not about what I desire.

In fact, I might be trying to help someone else.

But I think I know a better way to do it than God.

I think if I lie on these taxes, it's going to be better than if I help someone do this
honestly.

It's not just my desires, it's my ways.

And even with the best of intentions, my own ways are still selfishness in the sight of
God because it's me exalting what I think above Him.

Selfishness is at the heart of all sin, and it is seen in every sin.

1 John 2, verses 15 and 16.

love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.

If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride
of life is not of the Father, but is of the world.

Lust of the flesh, when I follow what I think is desirable.

He even did it in the garden when she saw the fruit and said that it was good for food.

And then there is lust of the eyes where I see something and okay, it's not just desirable
to me, I just think it plain looks good.

This is just something that I want because it seems desirable to my eyes.

And then there is pride of life where it exalts myself above others.

I climb the ladder of the status that I have put in my own reality and want to put others
down and when willing to put others down to get to where I want to be.

All of this sin,

starts with selfishness no matter how innocent sin might seem.

It is always over my own desires or following my way of thinking or even both or both.

Now we need to preface an idea here.

We're looking at this idea of being self-centered.

Caring about your own self, caring about what you need is not selfishness.

Acts 2, 47, after Peter and the rest of the apostles had preached

the first gospel sermon and when people were being baptized they were told be saved, save
yourselves from this untoward generation.

Acts 2.47 is the wrong quote but in Acts 2 somewhere right there you will find that, 34
rather or 44.

We're just going to move forward there.

Verse 40, and with many other words did he testify and exhort saying save yourselves from
this untoward generation.

See it is there.

They were told to do what?

They were told to save themselves.

Okay there is a concern for self here.

It is not wrong to be concerned about your own eternal destination.

That is something that is a command from God.

Not only that, James chapter 2 verse 8, if ye fulfill the royal law according to the
scripture.

thou shalt love thy neighbor as, as what?

As thyself.

See, if you're going to love your neighbor properly, if you're going to have the correct
view of how you should value your neighbor, you need to value yourself first.

The love that we are to have for others realizes that we are made in the image of God.

We, God looked at us and said, I'm going to send my son down to this earth for you.

And then,

we show the same kind of love toward others.

Now, we don't have a perfect son to give to others, but we have all of our lives that we
can give in service of our fellow human beings, and most of all, our God.

Before we can love others, we must love, appreciate, value ourselves.

Again, selfishness, does not, self-care is not selfishness.

This even applies when we look at marriage.

Ephesians 5 28, husbands are to love their wives even as their own bodies.

A man is not prepared to be a spouse until he knows how to take care of himself, until he
desires to take care of himself.

Someone who doesn't do that is someone that's not in his right mind.

we're looking at something different from self-care, of taking care of yourself.

In fact, if you were worried about just what was best for you, what was going to be the
best thing you could ever do for yourself, you'd look to God's Word and you'd find the way

to go to eternal life.

This selfishness, it does something incredibly terrible.

If we actually went for what was right for us, what was going to benefit us, we would open
our eyes to reality.

We would look to God's Word

as we do as New Testament Christians and realize, okay, this is what I have to do to
receive eternal life.

While selfishness says, I have a reality.

I have a way that I look at the world that's better than God.

What He has for me, that's not worth it.

I want to follow my own way, my own desires, my own lusts.

Selfishness is a terrible disease where it's always about what I like, what I know, what I
want, what I see.

It's a sickness that is throughout our world.

Now, we're going to look at some other ideas today with this.

We'll briefly look at the idea of what are the symptoms of selfishness?

How can we easily see where it is in our lives?

Who are the victims of selfishness?

Who is it going to hurt if it is within our lives?

And finally, the solution.

And spoiler alert, we've already mentioned it today.

It's going to be the love of God.

Now, looking at the victims,

looking at the symptoms of selfishness.

Look at three major ideas, and it's going to be the depth of where selfishness takes you.

First, selfishness is going to make it to where I follow my impulses, what I want in the
moment.

But then after that, it's going to be willing to follow my goals, that which I desire, but
I'm willing to put off instant gratification to go towards something.

It's just still not what God desires.

And then even further than that,

when it's all about my own beliefs, when I have changed, as we mentioned earlier, the way
I view reality because I don't want the way God says it.

First, looking at the idea of following our own impulses, Scripture talks about this time
and time again.

Proverbs 6, 27-35, can a man take fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burned?

Can one go upon hot coals and his feet not be burned?

So is he that goeth into his neighbor's wife.

Whosoever toucheth her shall not be innocent.

Men do not despise a thief if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry, but if he be
found, he shall restore sevenfold.

He shall give all the substance of his house." Okay, we're looking at the symptoms of
selfishness, and part of this is the pain that it's going to bring.

When a man is willing to follow after his own lusts, in this scenario it's after a woman,
one who already belongs to another man.

it's going to be like him walking on coals.

He is only bringing pain on himself.

When he sees what he wants in that moment and he goes after it, it is only going to harm
him.

The Proverbs also talks about this idea in chapter 23, 29 through 35.

Not only in the man who chases the impulse of that desire, who hath woe, who hath sorrow,
who hath contentions, who hath babblings, who hath wounds without cause,

who has redness of eyes, they that tarry long at the wine, they that go to seek mixed
wine." It's going to go to show, don't look at this, don't try to follow it, don't follow

your own desires.

Look not upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth its color in the cup, when it moveth
itself right.

At the last it biteth like a serpent, it stingeth like an adder.

When someone looks at that wine and says, it is so desirable, the lust of the eyes is
right there.

Look not upon the wine when it is red.

When they think about the desire, the physical gratification it can bring them and follow
after that, this symptom of selfishness, the following impulse is only going to bring

harm.

It's only going to bring physical pain.

There's the impulse of my desires.

There's also the impulse of, there's that impulse of alcohol I've seen previously now.

And there's also the impulse of the things that I say.

James chapter 3 verse 5, even so the tongue is a little member that boasteth great things,
how great a matter a little fire kindleeth.

Now it's not just after the things that I chase now.

That's not the only impulse that there is that can be followed.

There's the impulse of saying what I want to say because I want to say it because I think
it's what needs said right here.

If we had time the Proverbs writer shows so much about how make sure your words

are seasoned with salt.

Make sure that your words are what is needed in the moment.

Whatever you say has a purpose, has a benefit.

When it's just about what one desires to say because there is something to be said, that
is going to only cause fires.

That is only going to cause things that are painful.

Now there's things that hurt that need to be said.

The kisses of an enemy are deceitful, but the wounds of a friend

Those are something that's loving.

The Proverbs writer also shows.

It's when things are said that are hurtful for no purpose or for the purpose of that pride
as was described earlier.

Selfishness will follow my own impulses.

But we also talked about the idea of goals.

Going past the idea of what I want in the moment and going toward, what do I want later?

In this world, we often exalt those who are able to build up riches for themselves.

We look at people who have a fancy house and we're like, hey, good for him, and rightly
so.

Ecclesiastes' writer shows a man's joy, man's blessing on this earth is to work, to know
he worked, to go to bed knowing he worked, and then to eat of the fruit of his labor.

It is good for a man to enjoy the things that he has.

But if we live a life that is focused on those things, on building up riches, where is it
going to lead?

Even if we won those riches,

Honestly, if that's our focus, what does it do?

Luke 12 verses 16 through 21.

There was a man who did this.

Luke 12, 16 through 21.

And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth
plentifully.

And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do?

Because I have no room where to bestow my fruits.

And he said, This will I do.

I will pull down my barns and will build greater.

And there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods.

And I will say to my soul, soul thou hast much goods laid up for many years, take thine
ease, eat.

drink and be merry.

This man thought that he had it all and he now had the goal of saying, know what, I have
this great income, let me just store it in a barn, I don't have to work ever again, I'm

just going to eat, drink, rest, just have a good old time.

What did the Lord say about what he did?

Thou fool, thy soul shall be required of thee.

Then who shall those things be which thou hast provided?

So is he that layeth up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God." Matthew 6 33,
seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added

unto you.

This man wanted to build his barns.

He wanted to bestow all his goods to himself, but the Lord said that because he had not

been rich toward the Lord.

Because he had been so focused on what he desired, his soul would be required of him.

Someone is not going to be struck down by the Lord today because they are focused on their
riches.

But one day they will have to answer for how they use them.

We are thankful for members of the Lord's Church who are willing to go out and work hard.

And we are so thankful

when they are able to enjoy the blessings that they have laid up for themselves.

And as the Apostles shown, whatever a man owns that is his own.

Ananias and Sapphira they were killed because they acted as though they gave everything,
but they only gave a portion.

And then what is it the Apostles said?

They didn't say, you should have just given everything.

What they said was, while it was yours was it not your own to do with it what you will?

When something belongs to someone it's their own.

The Lord is not a communist, but what he does desire is charity.

What he desires is loving giving.

Not out of some kind of mandate, but out of something that is willing and from the heart.

God loveth a cheerful giver.

But the one who is not a cheerful giver is as this man, who is focused on my barns, my
corn, my wealth, my houses, instead of what the Lord desired.

Selfishness follows my own impulses, going after what I want in the moment.

Or if someone has gone beyond the wisdom of that, he might just follow his own goals, even
spending his whole life going toward them.

He can be focused on the goal of riches, but also on the goal of pursuing authority.

Now this ties to pride of life, as riches could as well.

But there were those who were willing to do incredibly wicked things just for authority.

Saul did this countless times.

1 Samuel 20 verse 30.

1 Samuel 20.

In this chapter there is a feast occurring and in this feast Saul has built up his
jealousy and angst toward David and now there is this feast where Saul desires to have

David there so that he can kill him and then he realizes that he isn't there and Jonathan
is talking with him about it.

Jonathan tells that

Jonathan unfortunately says the lie giving a false reason for him not being there.

But Saul sees the fact that there is a correlation between David not being there and what
Jonathan knows.

And then verse 30, then Saul's anger was kindled against Jonathan.

And he said unto him, thou son of a perverse rebellious woman, do not I know that thou
hast chosen the son of Jesse to thine own confusion, and unto the confusion of thy

mother's nakedness.

For as long as the son of Jesse liveth upon the ground, thou shalt not be established, nor
thy kingdom.

Wherefore now send and fetch unto, fetch him unto me, for he shall surely die." Now we're
talking about the idea of goals and authority here.

There is something terrible about Saul here.

Not only is it about him being king, not only is he going against God saying, listen, one
day you aren't going to be king again.

He goes against what God said when he said, your seed will not keep the kingdom.

Saul goes as far as to curse his own wife, his own person that was the mother of Jonathan.

And then he says, don't you know that as long as David lives, you aren't going to be king?

The kingdom's not going to be established in your hands.

Saul took his own goal.

He took what he desired, and he

put it on Jonathan.

He impressed his own desire upon Jonathan, expecting him to follow the same thing.

It's as though Saul acted as though Jonathan would have wanted the exact same things he
did.

There is the idea of authority here.

And there's also the idea of a father trying to impress on his son the own life of the
father, what he desires.

There can be times where parents say, want you to go be a doctor, go be a lawyer, because
that's what the parents were.

because that's what their desires were.

That's not for the benefit of the child when that happens more often than not.

It's because the parents want to relive their lives again, to continue some kind of family
legacy and heritage.

When Saul did that he threw a javelin at his son.

When Saul did that his family ended in shame.

It's not the godly way.

It's a selfish way that says the way that I desire it is the way it needs to be.

While what God said was train up a child in the way he should go.

And when he is old he will not be

depart from it, the point being there a child should be trained in the way he has been
toward his tendencies.

Jonathan didn't want to be a king, in fact it would have been wicked for him to want to be
the king.

What he wanted was the benefit of David, but Saul was too selfish to see any of that, to
see any of it God's way, to see anything Jonathan's way.

It followed only his own goal of trying to keep the kingdom.

There is the goal of riches, the goal of authority as has been seen.

Saul is not the only one who did this in Scripture.

We could also look at John 11, verse, in John chapter 11, and in this chapter the
Pharisees are going to be gathered together and they're going to say, need to kill this

person, this person being Jesus, before the Romans come and take away our place and our
nation.

See, in this they are focused on their authority, on their place, and they say that even
before their nation.

It's not just about their people.

They don't just look at Christ and say, He's a threat to national security.

No, He's a threat to their bureaucracy.

When Jesus is a threat to your government, that government is ready for the judgment of
the Lord.

That is where the Pharisees were, and they would ultimately face the Lord's judgment AD
70.

This selfishness occurs in the individual level when we want to follow our own riches.

And then it follows even further when we look at the idea of authority.

Moving forward, selfishness will follow my own goals or my own desires.

It will follow my own goals and finally my own beliefs.

In this I won't see from other people's point of view.

Proverbs 27 verse 9, the righteous consider it the cause of the poor, but the wicked
regard if not to know it.

the righteous consider it the cause of the poor.

He looks at it and he cares about them, but the wicked regardeth not to know it.

Now this idea of regardeth is the idea of seeing something from another person's
perspective.

You see the wicked person, the fool, he is too selfish to even start to see it from the
way someone else does.

While the righteous one, he consider it the cause of the poor, as the righteous will do
for anyone else.

If we follow God's way, we will be able to look at others and look at things from their
perspective, as the righteous will do for the poor, as we will do for anyone else in any

kind of disagreement.

We will be able to see it from someone else's perspective, but if we are selfish, that
won't be the case.

It will all be about the way that we think about it, rather than them.

Moving forward, it's not just a, I can think the wrong thing about others and...

not understanding, and also not seeing past my own tendencies.

1 Corinthians 13 verse 5, the last part of it says that, "'Charity thinketh no evil.'" The
selfless love that God has is not going to, it is going to take the benefit of the doubt.

It's not going to immediately impress evil upon others.

While the selfishness that is the opposite of it,

It's going to place upon others my own wickedness.

It's going to look at others and say that their motives must be the selfish things that I
say that need to be the case, if those are things that we harbor.

It's as though a child says, I know that you're lying because that's something that he
would often do.

That is not what the Lord's love is going to do.

this selfishness is going to think the wrong thing about others in these beliefs.

being unwilling to look at them with a proper perspective.

It will also believe the wrong thing about self.

As we saw with Saul, he had a terrible complex.

This is a man who would ultimately be insane.

One of his issues was he thought he was always the victim.

1 Samuel 23 verse 21, and Saul said, and he said to some who had come and said, is where
David is.

Here's this person you're trying to kill.

He says, "'Blessed be ye of the Lord, for ye have had compassion on me.'" He thinks that
He's the victim.

He thinks that He is the one being wronged.

And it comes out in His words right here.

He believes the wrong thing about Himself.

He's the one going after David, while He believes David is the one going after Him.

And then, as was described earlier with Saul, He wanted things to be His way with
Jonathan.

Another lesson we can learn from there is He thought He was always right.

He thought that David was the threat to the throne when Saul was himself.

He thought that the way he needed it was correct.

He thought that he was not his own worst enemy.

He thought he was just.

He thought he was correct.

And finally, believing the wrong thing about self, I can believe I'm the main character.

What is it that started all of it with Saul?

What made it to where he thought he needed to be to go after David?

The servant of Akish said unto him, I said unto Saul, Is not this David the king of the
land?

Did they not sing one to another of him in dances, saying Saul has slain his thousands,
and David his ten thousands?

This is rather the Philistines and not uh David with the Philistines rather than with
Saul.

But this statement is what caused Saul to go after David in the first place.

When David killed his ten thousands, but Saul only his thousands.

he didn't like that.

And that's what started it all because he thought he had to be the hero in the main
character.

And it led to the domino effect of everything else that we saw.

If I start to notice that my actions are harmed because someone hurt my pride and it
starts to change the way that I look at others, the way I treat them, there might just be

a problem with selfishness right there.

We've looked at the symptoms of selfishness.

It brings pain and suffering.

And it brings pain and suffering through my goals.

through my beliefs, through my impulses.

And who are those that are hurt by selfishness?

Who are the victims?

Everybody.

Time will not allow for us to look at David and his house fully.

He was the one who went after Bathsheba.

He went after Bathsheba, he had his sin, he killed Uriah, and what happened?

The punishment came where the Lord said to him, through Nathan, all of your house is going
to suffer the sword because of what you've done.

What's going to happen because of that one moment of selfishness David had?

He's going to face children, forcing children.

He is going to face children rising up and trying to be king when there was one who was
supposed to be.

There would be a domino effect of what occurred.

Now, this will happen in our lives if we allow selfishness to take place.

One of the first victims of selfishness is the home itself, and David's house was overrun
with it even though he was a man after God's own heart.

If we desire our own impulses to take over, we will hurt our children, we will hurt our
wives, our husbands.

Do we really want that?

Just for one moment or one goal of pleasure, whether that be that impulse or whether it be
the goal of riches, am I willing to put my family on the line for that?

One of the first victims of selfishness is the home.

And before that, as has been described earlier, is the person who is harmed by his own
sin.

But moving forward, a person can be hurt by his own sin, the home can be hurt by his sin,
and then the nation can be hurt by sin.

Righteousness exalteth the nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.

It's going to harm a nation if they just follow after their own desires.

What about a nation who just wants to kill babies because it's an inconvenience?

A nation who wants to put a casino wherever just so people can try to get money that isn't
even theirs.

What's going to happen to a nation like that?

Sin is a reproach.

It's going to hurt the person, it's going to hurt the home, it's going to hurt the nation,
and it's also going to hurt the church.

Diotrephes was one who wanted to have the preeminence as described by Paul.

He would not let some go out, he wouldn't let some go in.

Rather, he wouldn't let any come in who had any other doctrine.

He was one who was willing to hurt the church for his own pride, for the goal of
authority.

We've seen the symptoms of selfishness, the fact that it's going to be based on whatever I
want, whether it's short or long term, and the fact that it's going to hurt everyone

around me.

But finally, what is the solution?

And it's going to be the love of God.

It's going to strain impulses.

It's not going to go after those things I want to do.

It's going to realign goals where I truly do seek first the Kingdom of God and His
righteousness.

And it's going to change my beliefs.

It's going to make it to where when I look at God's Word I'm going to be objective enough
to listen to what He says because God's Word is truth.

He has all the evidence He needs, all the logic He needs for us to look at His Word and
believe it for what it says rather than twisting it to our own devices.

His love will change my impulses, my goals, and my beliefs.

The love of God was willing to send His Son.

It was willing to make a plan for us so that we could be saved.

And now he is patient with us now, waiting for us to be saved.

He has his love that he has shown toward us, and he desires to live that love in our
lives.

If we just simply decide to live that way.

1 Corinthians 13, and this will be our final chapter, our final passage today.

1 Corinthians 13, this love

is the antidote to this selfishness that plagues our world.

even if someone is able to do miracles, he is able to do incredible things, he has the
tongue of men and of angels, and he does not have love, he is a sounding brass or a

tinkling cymbal.

If one has all the power in the world and he can move mountains, what good is it if he
does not have love?

And if he gives everything he has, what good is it?

Without love, no good power or no good deed is even worth doing.

But if we have this charity that is described throughout the rest of this chapter, it will
help us live in God's way and one day be with him.

Charity suffereth long in his kind, charity envieth not, charity vaunteth not itself, is
not puffed up.

Imagine if Saul just had that one verse, that one verse, how would it have changed his
life?

How would it have changed what he did?

Does not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no
evil, rejoiceth not iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth.

And it bears, it believes, it hopes, and endures all things, and it's never going to fail.

If you want something that is truly worth your investment, then realize how much others
are worth.

That is the greatest commandment.

love your Lord, to see His value and put it before anything else, and then to see the
value of others.

If selfishness has plagued your life, if you have not come to your Lord, He has a way for
you to be saved.

He has a way that we must believe.

As we have described, selfishness is going to make it to where I am constrained to only
what I think, rather than looking towards God's way.

But if we believe His Word for what it says,

and believe that word that says we must repent of our sins, we must confess and be
baptized in His name, Acts 2, 38, so that we can be saved.

We can then enjoy the love that He has for us after we have shown our love for Him and
continue to do so throughout our lives.

And for one who is a Christian who has experienced the love of God in your life, one who
knows what it is like

to be washed in the blood of the Lamb, but you've turned back to those things.

The Lord wants you, and He's never going to give up on you so long as He hasn't come back
to this earth or you have passed away from this earth.

While there is opportunity, will you come and take advantage of the love of God as we