1 Corinthians 13:2-13 & 14:1 | Episode #998

August 6, 2025

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

1 Corinthians 13:2-13 & 14:1

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

If you would like to revisit today’s Bible study, please visit our website at https://hopealive.buzzsprout.com/ to download the transcript. 

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to Hope.

Applying God's word to your daily life.

As we finish Faithful Finance, we want to produce our winter Bible study done at Lake Community Church on First Corinthians.

It'll be a fairly long Bible study.

We will break it up into different parts and so you will get a really good, really fast study through the book of First Corinthians before we move on to the book of Joshua.

And though I have the gift of prophecy, which means I can express to you spiritual things that can only be taught and understood by the Spirit, whatever they are,

and understand all mysteries and all knowledge,

and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountain, meaning I can understand things that nobody can understand, and I can see things from God that nobody can know, and I can see things in the future of somebody else's life that there's no way it could ever be expressed except by the timeless God who knows all things.

He says if I know all that stuff and I have the faith that can tell a mountain to get up and move right there in front of me. He says if I have all that, all those things,

but I have not charity,

meaning the strong desire to give you the fullness of my love,

then I have nothing.

And remember this word love here is agape over and over and over again.

And though I stole all my goods to feed the poor, meaning I give all my money,

I'm wealthy, and I just give and give and give.

And that's a spiritual gift too, by the way.

And though I give my body to be burned, meaning I have the gift of. That's a gift one not a lot of people pray for.

The gift of martyrdom.

I give my body to be burned, but I have not charity.

I have not God's free will. Love,

it profits me nothing.

Mean that if I don't have the very core of the character of God, it doesn't matter.

The core of character of God is I love.

Even if it does nothing for me,

I do has no gain for me.

You got you. You need to hear that.

True God, love does not gain anything other than to express.

Love suffers long.

It's patient.

Love is kind.

By the way,

I wrote down at New Judges School the 10 Commandments of a Judge.

Do you know what the first two commandments were?

Be patient and be kind.

Wonder where they got it.

He says love does not envy, it does not parade itself, meaning it's not boastful and it's not puffed up,

it's not proud.

It does not behave rudely, and it does not seek its own. It's not provoked.

And it thinks no evil, meaning you're. It's not easy to make it. You can't provoke it to anger or wrath.

And it's not.

It's not rude.

It doesn't seek its own. It's not selfish.

It's not provoked, thinks no evil.

Meaning it has nothing to do with. Not God.

It is God.

It does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth.

Meaning it takes no joy out of that which is evil.

But remember, it also doesn't. It's also longsuffering in kind,

even to that which is evil. But it doesn't rejoice in.

Says it bears all things,

it holds on to all things.

It believes all things, meaning all the things that are from God. It trusts,

it hopes all things. That's the word. Anxious, expectation.

It means it anxiously expects it.

Okay.

And it endures all things, meaning it will go through whatever it takes to have its purpose and its fullness.

Even bearing the cross,

he says love never fails.

It's always victorious.

It always wins.

You can't lose with it. There's no way to lose with it.

Charity.

Love does not lose.

It always wins.

It always wins.

But where there are prophecies,

they will fail. Nice. This is where the cessationist argument comes from. And it's. It's weird because it's almost like it's gaslighting you.

It's taking the argument that quite clearly says it still exists and says it doesn't.

Let me prove it to you.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, meaning there are speaking of spiritual matters,

whether they be telling the future or not,

they'll cease.

They'll fail. Where there are tongues,

they'll cease.

Where there is knowledge,

it will vanish away.

Okay,

so the question is,

when does that happen?

Well,

for we know in part and we prophesy in part,

he's going back and talking about some of these things, Right?

All right.

Has knowing and prophesying in full come.

Has it?

But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part, will be done away.

Now, the argument is,

is that the Bible is complete and the rest of it's done away with.

Now, first of all, meaning the canon of Scripture is complete and we have it all,

and so there's no need for these miraculous gifts.

Okay, that's the argument.

The problem with that is, first of all, the canon's not complete.

If y' all come Next Wednesday night, we're going to study revelation, chapter 11.

In that chapter,

God gives a vision of seven thunders.

And in that vision, he. He tells them to shut the vision up and not tell them what it is.

Which means that's a revelation from God which has not been fully revealed. So if that revelation has not been fully revealed, is the canon complete?

No,

but there's another.

More. There's a way better argument about the canon not being complete. There is a book that's mentioned throughout Scripture from the Old Testament to the New Testament,

okay?

It's called in the Old Testament the Book or the Book of Life.

In the New Testament it's called the Lamb's Book of Life.

It is the story of all the work of Jesus Christ in all of humanity throughout time and history.

It's way bigger than anything we got.

It's huge.

It's got chapters about you.

It tells your whole story with Jesus Christ,

and it tells your whole story with Jesus Christ,

and it tells your whole story of Jesus Christ. It tells your whole story of Jesus Christ. It's not a. It's not a spreadsheet with your name on it.

Now don't get me wrong, I love that story because I love there. There's nothing better than a good old St. Peter joke out there looking in the Lamb's Book of Life trying to figure out whether you're in or not, right?

I love them. My, my best jokes are St. Peter jokes, okay?

But there is no book like that where you just look on a spreadsheet and find somebody's name and they're in or they're out.

Remember,

he says,

those who go to hell, depart from me. Not because you were sinner, not because you were lost, not because you were unredeemable. Depart from me,

for I never knew you.

And the way we know that you knew him is your name is in the Lamb's Book of Life. And he says, if your name is in that book, he will not blot it out.

So when your story is fully told in the Lamb's Book of Life, it does not go away.

And how big is that book? Well, John says he supposed that the whole world could not hold it.

That's a pretty big book.

And by the way, until it's finished,

until the last person name is written in it and the story is finished,

then the canon is not complete.

Perfection has not come.

But let's just look at it and see if it makes any more sense. He says, when I was a child, I spoke as a child. I understood As a child,

I thought as a child.

But when I became a man, I put away childish things.

And of course, I'm totally unchildlike spiritually myself.

I'm fully mature.

I fully understand it all.

I've got all the depth and breadth of all God's revelation.

I know it all.

Any man who would stand before you and say that, run from him.

He's probably putting together a cult and y' all gonna be going to some small country in South America and drinking Kool Aid. Okay, don't go.

He says.

He says, for now we see in a mirror dimly or glass. I love glass darkly. That just always is. It's one of those mirrors, you know. You've been to the fair,

you know the mirrors that aren't right,

you know they're not correct.

I call them all mirrors. Every time I look in one, it's just not correct.

I remember me when I was 22 and, you know, svelte and young.

I look at myself, first thing I see is,

you're gray headed. What is wrong with you?

Right.

He says, for now we see mirror dimly, but then face to face. Have y' all seen God face to face?

Do y' all know him perfectly?

Has perfection come?

No.

Now I know in part, but then I shall know, just as I also am known, meaning I will know everything.

And by the way, that's why tongues cease.

Why?

Because I'll know all the languages.

It's not going to be speaking an unknown tongue to you. You'll know them, too.

That's why prophecies cease.

Why?

Because I'm not going to impart to you spiritual things that you don't know. You know it.

Has that happened yet?

Is there any way these gifts can cease if it hasn't?

But by the way,

he says, and now these abide which the. Which means these things remain.

And what are they?

Faith, hope and charity.

All right, let me ask you something.

When you are perfect before God, will you need faith?

No.

You will operate in the fullness of the Holy Spirit, knowing all things. I won't have to trust him. I know him.

Do you have to have hope, which is an anxious expectation of something I don't have? I can't have an anxious expectation of what I've already got.

So if these three abide faith,

hope and love, charity,

then that means nothing has been completed yet,

which means it ain't over,

which means nothing the Holy Spirit has been described to be doing, has ceased.

But he says the greatest of these, which is the only thing that remains at the end is the very character and nature of God's love,

His chosen love.

There's a great argument he's making here.

Then he's going to come back and he's going to say, I'm going to instruct you in these matters.

I need to teach y' all how to do it right. Because y' all a bunch of crazy folks been in Zeus's temple doing nutty stuff.

Let me teach you. And I say that because we are a church who believes in the gifts of the Spirit,

believes in the fullness. You know, people say, are y' all full gospel? Well, we just full Bible. You know what I'm talking about? Gospel and all of it.

We believe it all. We don't believe anything's gone.

Many of us are Baptistals and presbycostals and Catholicostals and whatever else there is out there.

We operate in these gifts,

but we try to do it biblically and rightly and orderly and under authority.

And that's what chapter 14 is about.

As you go today, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you,

and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.