Wednesday, August 23, 2006
"Love endures all things" (1 Corinthians 13:7).
IDEA: Our love should be a reflection of God's love that endures.
PURPOSE: To help listeners appreciate the fact that God puts up with us.
I. There's a famous story in Luke 15 about a boy who leaves home and goes to a distant country. He has gotten his father to give him his share of the inheritance before the father has died. But when the boy gets to the distant country, he squanders everything.
If you were guessing, how long do you think that young man was away from home?
He makes a complete mess of his life, but decides that anything is better than living in squalor, and he returns home. What happened when he came back?
How do you think the people in the village felt about the boy?
How do you think the older brother felt about the boy?
How did the father think about the boy?
What do we call this story?
Do you think it's wrongly named?
Helmut Thielecke has a book on the parables, and calls this parable "The Waiting Father."
What do you think motivated the father to endure as he did the actions of his son, in spite of the way the older son felt and the people in the village might have felt?
What do you think the vision of God is in 1 Corinthians 13? How do you think that informs this chapter?
Do you feel that when Paul says that love endures all things, that's pushing the impossible?
Look at the characters in the Old Testament and look at what God put up with. If His love didn't endure, very few would have survived.