"Love does not rejoice in iniquity" (1 Corinthians 13:6).
IDEA: If we love people, we won’t rejoice in the evil other people do.
PURPOSE: To help listeners understand why it’s a sin against love to delight in other people’s failures and sins.
VOICE of someone doing the news, reporting that “there have been no fires and no crime in our community in the last year. Our latest bulletin is that more than 2,000 people have gone out of their way today to help their neighbors and to be kind to people at work. Over 90,000 couples have been together in stable marriages for over 30 years. Their children have graduated from high school and are now in college and are doing very well.
“Here’s a report just in: a huge number of ministers and priests and rabbis -- 97% -- have given at least 65 hours this week to helping people in their congregations and to praying for people in their community. This us up from three years ago when only 94% did that.
“Now for the weather. There are no storms in the Caribbean, the weather is good, and the traffic report is that the mass of cars got from work to their homes with only a minimum of delay and with no accidents.”
How would you respond to a news program like that?
When we say we listen to the news, what do we mean?
I. We often take malicious pleasure when someone we know about fails or sins.
Alice Roosevelt, daughter of President Teddy Roosevelt, had a pillow made for her sofa on which was embroidered: “If you can’t say anything good about somebody, come sit next to me.”
Gossip thrives on our ugly delight in wrongdoing.
We hear about a marriage in trouble and the gossip is “too good to keep” or “it’s not worth keeping,” so we pass it on.
We can do it in the form of prayer requests or Christian “concern.” Are all requests that we make without the motive of delighting that someone else has done wrong or has been hurt?
II. Paul says that love does not delight in evil. In other words, we don’t rejoice when someone else does wrong.
We don’t enjoy a part where we spend the evening talking about other people’s virtues, success, gifts. We enjoy pointing out other people’s sins. When other people do very well in a field we’re in, it can actually bother us to have another succeed. Why?
The sin we play with in our minds may seem less evil beside an act of open sin. Gossip inflates our feeling of superiority, or it can console us. A Baptist deacon reported that the church had had no conversions or baptisms and was declining in membership, “but thank God the Presbyterians aren’t doing any better.” The “humor” in that story speaks to our human condition.
III. We’re tempted to delight in evil in our culture.
Political life: rumor is the poisoned fruit of politics. Gloating over evil is not less loving when we’re dealing with people in the capitol.
Television sitcoms are often well written with clever dialogue.
We laugh at sin. But because the ultimate consequences of sin are real, love can’t share the glee of a successful transgressor either in fiction or in life.
Sin does damage. Sometimes it’s like laughing at people dying of cancer or being amused by starvation.
We’re really not loving when we rejoice at what harms other people, even though we’re tempted to do so.