All right, so we will go back to our series in 1 Corinthians. Now that we have finished our series on the attributes of God, I'll try to focus on one preaching series. I know, I'm sorry, my mind is all over the place. I have too many things on it, but let's now focus then on 1 Corinthians. So we'll go back to chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians. We'll continue where we left off last time. which was that we completed verse 7 and we'll continue with verse 8. But we'll read the whole chapter together to get the whole context and then we'll have a look at at least verse 8 and maybe a little bit more than that. But let's read the whole chapter. 1 Corinthians chapter 13. If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned but do not have love, it profits me nothing. Love is patient, love is kind, and is not jealous. Love does not brag, and is not arrogant. Love does not act unbecomingly. It does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered. does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. But if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away. If there are tongues, they will cease. If there is knowledge, it will be done away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child. But when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, love abide these three, but the greatest of these is love. Amen. As you know very well by now, this chapter is about love. It should be fairly obvious by this point. And as we have gone through it, we have seen three or four, maybe, when we are done with the chapter. But so far we have seen two, and we'll begin with our third part of this chapter. The first two was first the preeminence of love, verse one through three, and then the perfection of love, verses four through seven. Those are the two parts we have been looking at, and we will begin our third part this morning. The... permanence of love, beginning in verse eight. But just as a reminder, so that we are all up to speed, we remember what we have been looking for, we're just quickly gonna... do a little review. And if you remember, we started there in verse one through three with the preeminence of love, that love is the most important thing. Love is more important than anything that you do or say or think. Indeed, love should motivate everything you say, think and do. Love is of uttermost importance. And of course, when we speak about love, let's just remind ourselves that we're not speaking just of any kind of love. We're speaking about agape love, divine love, love that is foreign to us, love that is coming from above, from God, love that is so... foreign to us that we cannot produce it. Indeed, we would never have agape love if God did not give it to us to begin with. This love is very, very foreign. Now again, going back to the preeminence of love and how love is more important than anything else, we saw that Paul was giving us a few examples. Maybe he was exaggerating a little bit, but The important point there was love is everything or is above everything else in whatever that you do. He gave us the example of speaking with tongues of men and of angels. And then, if I have the gift of prophecy and if I know all mysteries and have all knowledge and all faith, so as to remove mountains. And then, if I give all my possessions to feed the poor and surrender my body to be burned. All these things are good things. Paul is not taking examples of bad things. All these things they list here are good things. However, even good things can be done for the wrong reason. And that is, of course, the whole point. If you do not have love, but do these things, it profits you nothing. It is of no value. You must have love. Love is preeminent. Everything that a Christian does must be based on divine love. And then verses four through seven, we looked at what this love is. But of course, it's good to know that we should have love in everything that we do. But what is this love? Paul, you're telling us to do everything in love, but what is this love? So he gave us a portrait. He painted this beautiful picture of what love is or really what it's doing. and what it's not doing. And we saw that he was almost like a person. And of course, it is a person. Paul is looking to his Lord, Jesus, and looking at him, just taking notes from his life. Jesus did this. Jesus didn't do this. This is love. This is what love does, because we see it in Jesus. So what did we see? Verse 4 through 7. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not jealous, love does not brag, love is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly, does not seek its own, it's not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. A list of 15 different characteristics of love, what it does and what it doesn't do. These verses, I hope, gave us a concrete picture of divine love, so that when we now move into the perseverance, that's not the word, the permanence of love, we know what it is, we know it is important, and we will know that it remains forever. We have everything we need now to move on, to take a step and mature our acts of love. Make it so lasting as love truly is. It never stops. It never fails. Love. is above everything. So that's what we're going to do now. We're going to take a moment to look at verse 8 and then we're going to move into verse 9 and 10. And we're not going to complete that, I'm afraid, because it takes some time to have a look at the word, the perfect. Because that's, for some reason, a very controversial word. But we'll start at least. But we'll begin in verse 8, as we do. So let's read that. Verse 8 says, Love never fails. But if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away. If there are tongues, they will cease. If there is knowledge, it will be done away. Now, the first thing that should catch our attention here is the first three words, of course. Love never fails. Love never fails. Now, literally, the word fail means to fall, like a leaf who falls down out of the tree and falls down to the ground and withers and dies. That's what the word means here. Divine love, in that sense, never falls down, it never withers, it never dies. It's everlasting. It endures forever and ever. Love is, by its very nature, eternal. I mean, in the same sense that God is eternal. We know that from our series on the attributes of God. God is eternal and love is also eternal. It will never stop. It will never fall down, wither, die. Now, the word here in English is fail, and that might bring our mind to the word success, like love never fails in that sense. It's always successful, but that's not at all what... I don't think that's at all what Paul means here. He's not talking about success and failure. He's merely talking about the permanence of love, that it never stops, it never falls down. It's always enduring. I mean, it's a lovely idea to think that love never fails. It's always successful. You can say that, I will love you so much that I will love you into the kingdom. I will be successful in that sense. And of course, it's a lovely idea, but that's not at all Paul's point here. Just wanted to make that clear because again, the word in English seems to indicate some kind of failure or success, but that's not really what Paul is talking about. The main point again is the permanence of love. Love endures. Love goes beyond and on and on into eternity. Already now we can taste eternity by this love. We know that we're not, in our current physical bodies, eternal beings. Our souls are eternal, obviously, but everything we can touch, feel, see, taste, so on, it's not eternal. But love, divine love, is eternal. You know that all other kinds of love will pass away. Phileo, Eros, all those other kinds of love that I've been talking about, those will pass away. But agape love will never, ever stop. And in contrast to this, we of course have the spiritual gifts, which is the greater context we have been talking about in chapter 12. We'll come back to in chapter 14. Paul is already preparing us for that. He's talking about three different gifts here. But in contrast to these gifts, love is eternal while the gifts are very much not. They are very temporary. They will cease. They will pass away. It's inevitable. We have to see it. It's that these gifts are so very temporary. Their nature is different than that of love. Now, the first thing I want to note here about the temporary nature of the gifts is the word that Paul puts in front of each of these gifts, and it's the word if. If. Now I know that some Bibles don't include this word for whatever reason. I know my Swedish Bible doesn't. I don't know how it is with your Bibles, but the NASB at least is faithful enough to the text to include the word if. And it's important. It should be there. Paul is making a point by including the word if. The translation should really say, but if prophecies, if tongues, if knowledge. And why is this important? Because Paul is, of course, very aware of the temporary nature of gifts. They will not always manifest. They will not always be there in the church. Indeed, some of these gifts were so temporary that they were only manifested in the early church for a very specific reason. I'm, of course, talking about the more miraculous gifts that were there to confirm the message of the apostles, the message of the good news of Jesus Christ, where before we had the New Testament, before we had anything, or they had, let's say that we weren't there, but before they had the New Testament, they had those gifts to verify, to confirm their message. But Paul is very aware that these gifts will not last. Therefore, he puts the word if before that. And indeed, even if these gifts would be lasting to this day, not every Christian has them. Not every Christian goes around and prophesies. Not every Christian goes around and have the gift of knowledge, which we talked about in chapter 12, and so on. We have separate gifts. Now, some have more than one gift, blessed as they are. Some have fewer. But still, they are temporary and they do not always manifest. Therefore, Paul is adding this word, if If, if, if this gift, if it manifests, if you know, if you see it, if you're blessed by it, know that it is so, so short-lived. So short-lived. It is the Spirit who decides how He distributes His gifts. You should not expect it to manifest all the time in every Christian, in all places. These are but for a time. That's the first thing we have to note about the temporary nature of the gifts. Then the second thing we can note about the temporary nature of the gifts is which gifts Paul lists here, addresses here. He mentions three gifts. Prophecy, tongues, and knowledge. Prophecy, tongues, and knowledge. Now, prophecy and tongues we'll talk a little bit more about in chapter 14, but here Paul also includes knowledge. Why these three? Well, probably because they were highly sought after in the Corinthian church. These were the gifts that everybody desired. These people who are still very immature, very fleshly, were looking for spectacular things. They were looking for people who could prophesy from the Lord, who could speak in new tongues, who had the gift of knowledge. These were gifts that the Corinthians desired. Their appearance of the gifts gave the impression that this Christian who has them, he must be special. He must almost be, dare I say it, perfect, complete. He must be specially chosen by God for something more holy, an elevated position. They were looking at these gifts from the completely wrong viewpoint, desiring the gifts for the wrong reasons. And Paul takes hold of these three gifts now and shows the Corinthians the folly in valuing gifts who are so temporary, who will be here today and gone tomorrow. Why do you value these gifts so much? Oh, it's a folly. You should value love. It is eternal. It will never fail. It is more important than everything. Why don't you value love, Corinthians? Oh, that you would understand the preeminence of love, the permanence of love, the perfection of love. It's almost as if the Corinthians saw themselves or those people again who had these gifts as perfect. Maybe the perfect that we'll talk about a little bit in verse 10. Might be a hint to that. So therefore, again, Paul wants to correct the opinion of the Corinthians. And of course, not just the Corinthians, everybody who has a wrong understanding and he comes with a wrong Intention to the spiritual gifts needs to be corrected by Paul's words here. These gifts, if anything, are temporary. They will be so short-lived. Why do you look to them? Look to love. Value love. Desire love above everything. If the gifts appear, and sometimes they do, it is for your edification. It is not for you to just possess, to have, to lift up yourself with, I am the prophet, I am the tongue speaker, I am the one with knowledge. No, they will soon, soon disappear, says Paul. Now the third thing, moving on. The third thing we should note here about the temporary nature of the gifts is what verbs Paul uses to say that they are temporary. He uses two different verbs. For prophecy, he uses the word, be done away. And with tongues, or prophecy and knowledge, be done away. And then with tongues, he uses the verb, cease. So we see, that Paul uses a couple of different verbs here. He's not using the same verb over and over. He's using different verbs, and I think it could be for just rhetorical effect, of course. He's not just wanting to repeat himself with the same word over and over and over. But I think he's using different verbs for a reason. for a reason. So what do these verbs mean? Well, the first verb, to be done away, means something that is nullified or put out of action. It's a verb used to show that someone has the power to cause something else to stop or to cease, cease to function, either because it's harmful and you need to stop its harmful function or because its function has been fulfilled. Its purpose is completed. There's nothing more for it here to do. Therefore, something else stops it, makes it go away, seizes it, nullifies it. Now, the verb seize is, of course, very similar. It's not that they're very different, but there is a small distinction. The verb seize has a more abrupt meaning to it. It means just to stop, desist, cease immediately. And this verb is often used when you want to show that someone is stopping He's stopping to do something immediately. Like in 1 Peter 4, verse 1, it says, He who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin. The sinner has ceased his sinning. That's how the verb is used. It's used by someone who is stopping an action in themselves. And this can be also seen in what is called the voice of the verb. If you don't know what the voice of the verb is, that's all right. We call it active or passive. Who is doing something in a sentence? Is it the subject who is doing something or is it someone else? And Paul is using here different voices for the verbs. For the first one, be done away, he uses the verb or the voice, sorry, Passive. He's using passive as in someone else is doing something or the subject is the one being acted on. That's passive. The car is driven, that's passive. The car is not driving itself, even though we have, of course, self-driving cars today. But, you know, you get the point. Someone else is driving the car. The car is driven, that's passive. And then the other verb, cease, is in what is called middle voice. And what is middle voice? Well, we don't have that in English or Swedish for that matter. I don't think we have it in Finnish either. What is middle? Well, middle is when the subject is both doing and is the object of the action. So it's a middle thing between active and passive. The subject is doing something on itself, literally. That's what middle is in simple terms. middle voice. And of course then we see when he uses it with the verb seize and especially with the gift tongues. What does that tell us? That tongues seize themselves. The other things will be done away by something or someone else. Prophecy will be done away, knowledge will be done away, but we don't know who. Well, of course, if you go a little bit further, we know that it is the perfect, verse 9 and 10 will come to that. But the gift tongues will cease, not because of someone else, but it will cease in and of itself. That's the verb that Paul is using here. And this difference really, it's not just a nuance, It means something. Paulists, and I believe this, John McArthur believes that, well, some scholars don't, but I think it's pretty clear that he's showing that the gift of tongues is even more temporary than these other gifts. It is so temporary that it will even seize itself. It will stop itself. It is only here for this little tiny period of time, and then it will stop of itself. There will be no need for anyone else to stop it, for any event or any person to come and seize it or the perfect as we will come to in verse 10. No, we don't even need to go into verse 9 and 10 to realize that tongues have seized. They seize themselves. It's in their nature to seize. And that is, of course, very important in how we interpret these gifts and what makes them stop, what makes them be done, go away, cease, stop. Because obviously, I already told you, and you probably know, if you have studied this passage and have an interest in charismatic gifts and when they cease, that there is a debate here. People will go to the nth degree to defend or to will defend their viewpoint and attack the other and say, well, we can see here this and that, and they completely miss this point. I don't think that gifts, sorry, tongues is even the object there in verses 9 and 10 when he talks about the perfect and the partial will be done away. That's not tongues. Tongues has already ceased before that. Now, of course, if we look at the nature of tongues and what they were used for, what was the purpose of the miraculous speaking in tongues? We know that it was, again, for the verification of the message, that the message of the apostles would be believed. And there was a secondary meaning also. It had the meaning of judgment, judgment on Israel. God had done it before when he had sent the Israelites into captivity, into a land where they spoke a language they did not understand. That was a sign of judgment. But these things are very temporary. The verification of the apostles' message is obviously temporary because we don't have apostles anymore. We have the word written down. And judgment on Israel was also temporary. They didn't stay forever in captivity. It was only for a short time. So we can see just by how tongues are used, its purpose, its meaning, that is always short-lived. It's always temporary. That's why I also firmly believe that God, or Paul here, God through Paul, is telling us that tongues will cease in and of themselves. It's not waiting for the perfect to come. It's already ceased. It's already fulfilled its function. It's done. Now, of course, this is talking about tongues in its miraculous form. Of course, we have people speaking in tongues. How else could we speak? We have to use our tongues. That's what it means. Languages. But I mean, that's obvious. It should be obvious that there is still the ability to learn languages and tongues and speak them with people. But we're talking about the miraculous gift of tongues. So, again, coming back to the main point here. In relation to eternal love, we see that the spiritual gifts will decay. They will be done away. Some have already stopped. They're not eternal. They're so very temporary. But love is eternal. Love endures because God endures. Now, having said that, and we'll have a little bit of time. We can move on. We'll leave verse eight. We'll go on into verse nine and 10, and we'll start looking at it. Again, I don't think, or at least I know we can't do the whole thing today because again, there's so much debate here. There's so much controversy with this word, the perfect. So we're gonna break it up into two parts. We'll continue next time, but we'll start looking at verses nine and 10. see what Paul says there. So let's read verse 9 and 10. It says, for we know in part, I'm prophesying in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. When the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. There's so much debate here. If you only knew how many books there were written about this. There are whole conferences just to this These few words, I find it amazing that so much controversy seems to linger here on this little phrase, this one word, the perfect. What in the world? I don't have any doubt in my mind that Paul was very clear when he wrote down this and he had no intention of it ever becoming such a controversial thing, but who knows? But again, We need to create a biblical understanding of this, of everything, of course, that we read in scripture. We're not going to come to this one word and be like, oh, we're going to defend cessationism. We're going to look at it from a cessationist viewpoint and this is what it means and boo to all those who say it differently. No, we're going to take it slowly, soberly, taking our time, studying this Word. Again, I intentionally slow down our pace here through 1 Corinthians just because it is... Well, first of all, love is so important. Let's not forget that. The main point of this chapter, why Paul is talking about love, it is far and above everything else. We can speak till our Wives go home and our faces become blue and yellow about the spiritual gifts. But beloveds, let's remember the important thing, which is love. Love. That is important. That's really why we have slowed down. We're not slowing down because there's a lot of controversy and we must know every single argument so that we can defend ourselves from those who disagree with us. No, we slow down because we look at love. There's always a reason to look at love, to have our minds conform to love. So again, before we tackle these verses, remember Paul's main point, the permanence of love. When the perfect comes, whatever it is, love will continue. The gift cease. Gifts go away. Every spiritual gift is temporary and short-lived. But love will continue even after the perfect has come. Whatever it is, there will still be agape love. Prepare for that which is eternal, not for the temporary. We all have enough of our temporary struggles and miseries. Let's prepare our minds for that which is eternal. Let's not forget that. But having said that, let's nevertheless make an introduction at least here in verses 9 and 10. The first thing I want us to see here in these two verses is what I already touched on earlier. Namely, that these gifts will be done away. What Paul mentions in these verses is that we will know and prophesy in part. Did you see this? He didn't mention tongues here. We won't speak in tongues in part, he says. No, we will know in part and we will prophesy in part. And then there's once again a reason why I think that Paul is Not including tongues here, because he knows they will have already ceased. When the perfect comes, there is no one speaking tongues anymore. They have already ceased. But we will continue to know in part and prophesy in part. We will continue to do these things until the perfect, whatever it is, comes. Tongues, however, is not waiting for the perfect to come. It will have already stopped. And again, I think this is important. And I think this settles the debate pretty much because it seems to be around the gift of tongues so much so that, yeah, people break off friendships with one another because of disagreements here. But let's not do that. Let's not be so immature that we break off friendships. brotherhood just because we disagree on one verse. Again, I think that the debate becomes pretty non-existent when we realize that Paul is not speaking about tongues in verse 9 and 10. When the perfect comes, who is even talking about tongues then anymore? They don't care about tongues anymore. They're looking to the perfect and they're still practicing what? Love. They're practicing love. So again, regardless of one's opinion about the perfect and regardless of our opinion on the charismatic or miraculous gifts, love will continue. And the debate, I think, can be pretty easily resolved if we only saw this distinction. Tongues have already ceased because they were very, always was very, temporary in nature. That's Paul's hope. Point here, come September, love is eternal. So once again, we have established this, once we have understood this, once we have looked at the text and realized, oh, Paul is not even talking about tongues, the perfect is becoming very clear, at least in my mind, what it is. And we'll talk about the different interpretations about it, but that will be for next time. So I'm gonna leave you with a cliffhanger there, but come back next time, we'll talk about the perfect, we'll go through the different interpretations of it. But before that, the second thing I want us to see is that these verses are a rebuke of the Corinthians. Like the whole chapter. Like the whole book, it's a rebuke to the Corinthians. Poor Corinthians, they received this and it was just rebuke after rebuke. Poor people, they were really in for something. They were immature and they needed someone to come and rebuke them. Someone to tell them off. And that is also what these verses is about, what I think Paul's intention was, because we cannot forget who Paul wrote to. He wrote to the Corinthians. He didn't write to the church in Jakobstad at year, whatever year it is, 2024, even though, of course, we are secondary recipients. He wrote to the church of Corinth with their problems. And I touched on it earlier. I said that maybe some of the people there thought that, well, the people who have these gifts, they are probably perfect. They're almost as perfect as you can be on this side of the grave. They have reached completeness. So I think there might be something in the word the perfect there. Paul is being a little bit sarcastical. When you think you are perfect, but wait until the perfect comes. You who think you are perfect. Just wait. And I think we see that by him using the words, we know in part and we prophesy in part. Corinthians, you know nothing. It's only in part. The perfect is still yet to come. Who are you to say of yourselves, well, I have the gift of tongues, therefore I am perfect. Oh, Corinthians, know this. You know in part and you prophesy in part. Just remember to love for eternity. And I think this is easily missed. Some people get so emotional with what they want to defend in these verses that they completely forget the context, they completely forget the people that Paul is writing to, and it's easily missed. However, the only perfect thing that ever walked on this earth was not one of us. It was not a spiritual Christian with many gifts. It was Christ. That's the only truly perfect thing that has been on this planet. And right now his physical body is in heaven, so he's not here. So whatever the perfect is, it is something outside ourselves, at least in our current condition. With our physical, frail bodies that decay and will die, will go away. So it is with the spiritual gifts. They are frail, they're temporary, they will go away. Now the apostle John tells us in 1st John chapter 3 verse 2 and 3 he writes, Beloved, now we are children of God and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when he appears we will be like him because we will see him just as he is. And everyone who has this hope set on him purifies himself just as he is pure. Now, our walk here is not one of perfection, but one of purification. Purification. Meaning that we repent from sin. We walk in sanctification, in obedience to God's word. That's what we are right now. We are not yet what we will be. Perfection is not in us. Perfection is outside us. So again, whatever the perfect is, we'll look at it next time. When it comes, it will make an end to all incompleteness, to all imperfection, to all partial. What is partial? And even now, as we are partial or temporary beings living here, walking here in imperfection, we can already taste that which is perfect and which is eternal and which will last, which is love. We are not what we will be but we can taste or what we will be which is eternal beings full of agape love. Leon Morris writes this, when the consummation is reached all that is partial disappears. it will disappear and perfection will come. And we'll leave the text here. We'll make it a little bit shorter message today, but we'll leave it here. We'll come back to it with the understanding that love never fails. All right, let's pray. Father, we come before you this evening or this, sorry, not this evening, this day, this afternoon with a minds that are intrigued, that are full of desires and want to know, what are you talking about here, Lord? What is the perfect? What is the meaning of gifts? Above everything else, we want to know, Lord. We're so eager to know, and yet we're reminded we know only in part. Oh God, that we would take that to heart. that we would settle it in our minds that however much knowledge we have and then however many gifts that we have, it will only be in part until the perfect comes. And we remember then. for all the good things that you have given us through gifts and knowledge and all the rest, to love, to love one another, to love now as we will love in eternity, as you have loved us from eternity past to eternity future. Oh God, help us love, help us Focus on the permanence of love. It is always here. It will never fail. Help us, Lord, to be loving beings. And Lord, for those who have heard this message this Sunday, who do not believe, who are not part of the kingdom, who cannot taste of the eternity of your divine love, please be merciful to them. Let the words trickle down into their hearts. Change them, Lord. Change them. Give them a new heart of flesh. Oh, God, be merciful to them as you have been merciful to us. So be merciful to them. Oh, God, we pray for them. We pray again that your son would be lifted up, that his name would be praised now and forevermore. We pray all these things in his precious name. Amen.