Beeson Podcast, Episode 483 Rev. Dr. Robert Smith Jr. Feb. 11, 2020 Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your hosts, Doug Sweeney and Kristen Padilla. Doug Sweeney: Welcome to the Beeson podcast. I am your host, Doug Sweeney, here with my cohost Kristen Padilla. We are so glad you've joined us for another week. If you listened to last week's podcast episode, you heard me talk about our first annual African-American ministry emphasis taking place this month in conjunction with black history month. We are excited to shine a light on God's work among our African American brothers and sisters in Christ. The next two weeks we'll have guests Cokeisha Bailey Robinson, a Beeson alumna, and the Reverend Dr. Charlie Dates, an old friend of mine from Chicago who will be with us to preach in chapel and spend time with our students. We hope you can join us on Tuesdays at 11:00 AM in chapel as we hear them bring messages from God's word. Doug Sweeney: This week is also a special week in the life of our school, as today, February 11 begins our annual biblical studies lectures. This year our lecturer is Dr. Ray Van Ness. Dr. Van Ness is the Dean of Union University School of Theology and Missions and Professor of Biblical Studies. He'll preach in chapel this morning at 11 o'clock and deliver two lectures on the pastoral epistles of Paul Wednesday and Thursday at 11:00 AM in Hodges chapel here at Beeson. These lectures are free and a wonderful opportunity to go deeper in God's word so we hope many of you will join us. Doug Sweeney: Today on the podcast we're featuring a sermon by our colleague, Dr. Robert Smith, Jr., Who preached this sermon last fall during one of our chapel services here at school. Dr. Smith of course, is one of the best known people here at Beeson and one of the most beloved preachers in the country and even the world these days. We are glad to share this sermon as part of our special emphasis month and we'll ask Kristen now to tell us more about Dr. Smith and what we're going to hear from him today. Kristen Padilla: Hello everyone and welcome to the podcast. Dr. Smith is no stranger to the Beeson podcast and to many of you and perhaps you heard him most recently on the show this fall as we talked to him about the death of his son Tony and the book he wrote as a result called mourning, with a U, to morning, without a U, as part of our mini series that we did on the podcast on grief. Kristen Padilla: Dr. Smith is the Charles T. Carter Baptist Chair Divinity and Professor of Christian Preaching at Beeson Divinity School. He is a world renowned preacher, as Doug has already mentioned, having preached at more than 100 universities, colleges and seminaries in the US, Great Britain, Middle East, Africa, Australia, you name it he has probably been there. His research interest include the place of passion and preaching, the literary history of African American preaching, christological preaching and theologies of preaching. Kristen Padilla: And so what we are playing for you today is a sermon he preached in chapel last semester as part of our series on the hymns of scripture, his text is 1 Corinthians 13 that great hymn on love. His sermon is called The Other Side of Love, which seems especially fitting to play this week, the week of Valentine's Day. Dr. Smith does in this sermon what I believe he does best. He preaches an exegetically and theologically rich sermon using images to convey truth. He is a visual preacher, painting images with words. Kristen Padilla: And I'd like to quote from his sermon, give you a couple of quotes as an example of this and for you to listen to as you listen to the sermon. The first quote that he mentions in his sermon is, "A church that does not have the spiritual fruit of love is either dying or dead, and that church needs to be admitted into God's general hospital." He also says, "The gifts have an expiration date and love transcends time. When time has fallen exhausted at the feet of eternity, love is. Because God is love and love doesn't define God. God defines love." So whether you are walking, driving, folding, laundry, whatever you're doing today, we pray that as you listen to this sermon, it will edify and encourage you in your walk with Jesus Christ. Doug Sweeney: Let's go now to Hodges Chapel and listen to Dr. Robert Smith on the other side of love. Kristen Padilla: Our reading for today comes from 1 Corinthians chapter 13. You can find that and follow along on page 959 in your pew Bible. "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging symbol. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have and if I deliver up my body to be burned but have not love, I gain nothing." Kristen Padilla: "Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away. As for tongues, they will cease. As for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up my childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope and love abide; these three, but the greatest of these is love." The word of the Lord. Congregation: Thanks be to God. Dr. Smith: Even now, Lord Jesus, even now. Even now for I ask this in your name, amen. I confess to you this morning that I will probably not say anything that you don't know or that you have not heard before, but I do want to remind us of what we have conveniently forgotten and deliberately ignored. I've been in places, churches, bible institutes, I've been in universities of religious nature that were very passionate about spiritual gifts, but indifferent about spiritual fruit, specifically love. And Paul understands this of course because he's pastored the church, the church of Corinth, the Corinthian Presbyterian Church. Corinthian Baptist Church, Episcopalian Church, you name it. And they were very excited about ecstatic supernatural gifts, but they lacked the spiritual fruit of love. Dr. Smith: Paul opens his first epistle, 1:6, by saying to the Corinthians, "You lack no spiritual gift." No spiritual gift. They had them. Paul list the multiplicity and the diversity of spiritual gifts in chapter 12 it's not an exhaustive list, it's not a comprehensive list, it's a representative list. And Paul shows the necessity of them and the importance of them and that God uses them in terms of employing a church with the needed gifts. But he says in the end of chapter 12, "But I showed to you a more excellent way." Not a gift, but a way of life, a lifestyle, a mindset. And that is the way of love. And spends the entire 13th chapter talking about the supremacy of love over the gifts. Because the gifts have an expiration date and low transience time, and when time has fallen exhausted at the feet of eternity, love is. Dr. Smith: Because as John says in first John 4:8 and verse 16, "God is love." And love doesn't define God, God defines love. But the last chapter of 1 Corinthians chapter 16 as he nears the end, verse 14, Paul says that, "Everything be done in love." Because he understood that a church that does not have spiritual gifts is a church that is anemic, impotent, and weak, but a church that does not have the spiritual fruit of love is either dying or dead. And that church needs to be admitted into God's general hospital where it can undergo a period of redemptive observation and have a blood transfusion and be put on life support because that church is either dying or dead. Dr. Smith: It's like the church at Sardis in Revelation 3:1 that had a reputation that it was alive, but John by inspiration of the Spirit said, it's dead. So a church can have a large building, but without love it's dead. A church can have a large budget, but without love, it's dead. A church can have a large membership, but without love it's dead. And therefore I want to convey this truth that when love, a fruit of the spirit, governs the use of the gifts of the spirit, the church of Christ is edified and God is glorified. If that sounds right, if that sounds theologically, responsibly and biblically accurate, participate with me in some African American call and response. Dr. Smith: When love ... that means you repeat after me. When love- Congregation: When love- Dr. Smith: ... a fruit of the spirit- Congregation: ... a fruit of the spirit- Dr. Smith: ... guides- Congregation: ... guides- Dr. Smith: ... and governs- Congregation: ... and governs- Dr. Smith: ... the gifts of the spirit. Congregation: ... the gifts of the spirit. Dr. Smith: The church of Christ- Congregation: The church of Christ- Dr. Smith: ... is edified- Congregation: ... is edified- Dr. Smith: ... while God- Congregation: ... while God- Dr. Smith: ... is glorified. Congregation: ... is glorified. Dr. Smith: Jürgen Moltmann, the German theologian who is know for a number of prolific writings, particularly one that I love most, The crucified God, said that he could not stand to listen to the music of Wolfgang Mozart more than one hour because it lacked conflict. It lacked tension. But he said he loved to listen to the music of Ludwig Von Beethoven because it had the presence of conflict and the presence of tension in it. I guess you'd have to say Paul was a Beethovian theomusicologist because there's conflict and there is tension in his music. Even in that hymn, 1 Corinthians 13, there's tension between the gifts of the spirit as prolific and as notorious in a positive sense as they were, well known. And there is love that is greater than all of them and will even be in existence in eternity. Dr. Smith: Paul is used to conflict and tension in his music. In fact, when he writes to the Corinthians, he writes to a church where there's conflict and where there is tension. There's conflict in Corinth over different parties. There are people who said, "Look, we belong to the Pauline party." Others said, "We belong to the Cephus party." Others said, "No, we belong to the Christ party." Others said "No, we belong to the Apollos party." Tension, conflict right there in terms of theological positions and then there's tension and conflict when it comes to various levels of Christianity. Dr. Smith: They're are those who are carnal. They're Christians, but they're carnal. And we have to be able to accept that. Remember this, as a founder a young church, Paul has founded it between 50 to 53 AD, they're from Corinth. They're on Acrocorinthus, the hill of Corinth. There is a temple, the temple of the goddess Aphrodite. There are a thousand female temple priestesses, if you will. And let me just tell you what it is, temple prostitutes. They would come down from the hill when the sailors would come in from the Ionian Sea in the West and the Aegean Sea in the East, and they would sell their wares, namely they would sell their bodies to these sailors. The sailors would bring with them their religions and plant seeds of their religion in the soil of Corinth and there became a syncretistic kind of climate in that area. Dr. Smith: And these were new converts and they are carnal. They're individuals who are still drinking theological Infamil and theological Similac. They're eating theological rice cereal. They're not strong at all. They're mixing in the world with that which is theologically astute that Paul has given to them and Paul has to be patient because one of the things he says about love is that love suffers long. And I think one of the things we do in churches, particularly when young people come, we want them to be instantly sanctified and be ready to be glorified the first day after their baptism. Dr. Smith: You've got to first of all, catch the fish before you clean the fish and God will take them through sanctification. If you just look at yourself, you will see that you are not there yet. But then there also folks like Aquilla and Priscilla, they are [inaudible 00:17:14] eating Christians, they eat theological porterhouse steak and theological T-bone steak. They are strong and there's conflict between the two. There's conflict in the courthouse. They are taking each other to court. There's conflict in the homes, they are divorcing each other. There's conflict even at the Lord's supper table. Some of them are getting drunk at the Lord's supper table and over eating and becoming gluttonous. That's conflict. And Paul knows how to play that kind of theological musicalogical presentations and recitations musically to these people. Dr. Smith: And Paul takes and writes a letter that addresses exactly where they are. I would say to you, brothers and sisters that Paul, as he writes to them, understands that there is a connection between theology and ethics. It's always been inextricably connected in the writing of Paul. That's our ethics, whether it's unethical or ethical, have something to do with whether we've been informed or misinformed or we have strayed from theological and doctrinal teaching. There is a rootage there. The fruit may be that of social injustice, but the root has to do something with doctrine and theology that presents a kind of licentious and permissiveness to those things with without ever, ever bringing people to repentance. Dr. Smith: I think that we need to understand brothers and sisters, that when Paul writes, for instance, when he writes Romans, he starts building a prodigious doctrine of mountains, of truth and teachings. That's all he'll talk about creation in Romans. He'll talk about sin, he'll talk about justification and propitiation and redemption. He'll talk about sanctification. He will talk about ecclesiology, that is the church. He'll talk about glorification. He will talk about sovereignty of God and election and predestination, but when he comes to chapter 12, though he has been dealing with ethics throughout these 11 chapters, he really gives us imperatives from verses 9 to 21, "Therefore, I beseech you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your service of worship." And don't let the world squeeze you into it's own mold. As J.B. Phillips would say, "Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and the perfect will of God." Dr. Smith: And then he moves to verses 9 to 21 and piles on imperative after imperative to show us that there was a relationship between theology and ethics. But the sequence, according to Herman Ridderbos, is not reversible when it comes to the indicative, the imperative. The indicative, what God has made us. The imperative, our response to what God has done. It is never the imperative before the indicative. I don't do anything at all to become I am becoming who I already am and that is my response to God's. Dr. Smith: Therefore, every Christian must understand that the answer to social issues is the gospel. We must address social issues in the context of the gospel and not shy away from it. I'm not talking about socializing the gospel. I'm about gospelizing the social. I'm talking about when the Bill of Rights conflict with the Bible, we take the Bible. When Capitol Hill conflicts with the hill far away, we take the hill far away. When the flag conflicts with the cross, we take the cross. When government conflicts with God, we take God. When the White House conflicts with the right house ... in my father's house, there are many mansions ... we take God. I'm not speaking as a Republican. I'm not speaking as a Democrat. I'm not speaking as an Independent. Heaven doesn't even know those terms. When you stand before God, he doesn't want to know what your party is. I'm talking about as a Christian. Dr. Smith: And therefore we must not shy away from them. The church has been too silent too long. I think we need to come to the place where we see theology and ethics, orthodoxy and orthopraxy interrelated. Paul was an amazing man. The worst thing you could do to a prisoner who didn't want to become a Christian was to chain him next to Paul in the prison. In Philippians 1:15 and following, Paul is talking about these chains have furthered the gospel and so the individual that would be chained to Paul would get saved and he'd go out and get someone else saved. Somebody else would be chained to Paul. That person gets saved. That person go out and get someone else saved. On and on and on. Paul turned his prison into a pulpit and what's happening today is we're turning our pulpits into prisons, so much so that we are afraid to stand up and preach the gospel. Dr. Smith: I'm not talking about being a motivational speaker. I'm not talking about being a politician. I'm talking about preaching the gospel so that the gospel speaks to every issue that we deal with. Here is Paul in this hymn showing that there is conflict and there is tension, but it's resolved with the spiritual fruit of love. It is Bryan Loritts in his book, A Letter to the Birmingham Jail, which was published 50 years after Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his letter from a Birmingham jail. In his essay, he says he was riding a New York subway train sitting down and talking to one of his friends. They were having a very fertile and fruitful conversation, but he said he noticed that when the train came to a stop to let people on and let other people off, that his friend stopped talking to him and closed his eyes and as soon as the doors were closed and the people who had gotten on the train had gotten on and others had gotten off, he began to start talking again. He said that happened about three times when people got on the train and got off the train that he would stop talking until a new load came on and Bryan got irritated. Dr. Smith: He said, "Now why is it that every time the train stops, that you stop talking and close your eyes and as soon as the train starts again, you start talking again?" He said, "I'll tell you this. My mother taught me chivalry and she taught me that if you are ever in a position where you are seated and there's a lady that's standing, you're supposed to give her your seat, but I was just tired today and I didn't want to give up my seat and if I looked and saw a woman standing, then my conscious would be stricken. So I just closed my eyes and turn my head." Dr. Smith: I do think that that's exactly what we are tempted to do sometimes. We need to open our eyes. Paul did. He talked about what's going on in the church. He talked about how the world is being affected and needed to be addressed to. The gospel does not need to be socialized. The gospel needs to be gospelized. And it is the answer to whatever the ills of this world is. I would not have a gospel that I could only preach on one side of the town, my side of the town. The gospel that I preach works in White neighborhoods, works in Hispanic neighborhoods, works in Asian neighborhoods, works in rich and poor neighborhoods. Dr. Smith: The gospel is not limited. It goes from the sanctuary to the street, from the pulpit even to the pavement. Paul writes, 1 Corinthians 13 we call it a hymn. It does have hymnic lines, the first three verses are rather hymnic. "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love, then I become a sounding brass or tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and have all knowledge and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains and have not love, I'm nothing. And though I give all my goods to feed the poor and though I give my body to be burned and have not love, it profiteth me nothing." That's very hymnic and we like those lines. Dr. Smith: In fact, we like 1 Corinthians 13. When we read it we have glimpses of wedding dresses and bouquets of flowers and tuxedos and cumberbunds and line dancing in the reception. I confess to you, Paul had nothing like that in mind. I know it's all right to use that, but that's not his original authorial intention. We have overused this word love so that we don't even have the capacity to accurately articulate it anymore. Love's a feeling. It's some kind of erotic response. Not only in America, but everywhere in the world, we're sitting dead on sex O'clock. It's a feeling. It's a feeling. And therefore it's Some Enchanted Evening, "You may see a stranger across the crowded room somehow, you know, you'll know even then that's somewhere you'll see her again and again. Some enchanted evening someone may be laughing, someone may be laughing across the crowded room. Then fly to her side and make her your own. All through your life you may dream all alone." It's a feeling. Dr. Smith: Ben Franklin was from Boston and didn't like it and moved to Philadelphia, went down the street and bought a loaf of bread. He met a girl and then discovered electricity. It's a feeling. It's a feeling. It's a feeling. B.B. King, "The thrill is gone. The thrill is gone away." Fats domino, "I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill." The Righteous Brothers, "You lost that feeling. Oh, that loving feeling. Oh, that loving feeling and now it's gone, gone, gone, oh, oh, oh." Dr. Smith: And that's what we think love is. Paul said, "No, that's not the kind of love I'm talking about. I'm talking about agape love. I'm talking about unconditional love. I'm talking about the love that comes out of the wellspring of the divine, the love of God." Paul lifts up this love for us to see. There are three Greek words for love. The first one is agape. It's the love of God and Paul talks about it in Romans 5:5. He says, "Hope makes not ashamed because the love of God is shared. Not sprinkled, but poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit." The kind of love that you can't contrive, you can't manufacture, you can't self-produce. It's love that God gives and we always respond to it because he always pursues us. He always takes the initiative. We love him because he first loved us. Dr. Smith: The love of God is marvelous, but then there is erotic love, sexual love, face to face love for lovers who are married, husband and wives. Do you not know that that word, eros, is replete in Greek literature but not one time is the Greek word eros found in the Bible, not once. And therefore, for those who are married, agape love has to inform, has to form, has to influence eros love. Why? Because eros love is selfish and therefore wants it's need met. When it wants it's need met, it exists for itself. That's why people stand up and say, "I need you. I can't make it without you. I'd rather be buried in a pine box than to know that you're with somebody else on the other side of town. It's about me. Fulfill me, meet me." No, no, there is, eros love, but it must be conditioned by agape and be unselfish. Dr. Smith: But then there's phileo love. It's side by side love between friends. So much so that when agape love informs phileo love a man really can have friendship with a woman and be chaste and be pure, because agape love informs phileo love. And a woman can't have friendship with another woman and a man with another man. And there is nothing of an alternative lifestyle that's taking place, because agape love conditions it and keeps it focused on the love of God. Dr. Smith: And so Paul reminds us that the greatest of these is love. I must hurry. I must hurry. I learned a great lesson from geography. I just believe that every word in this Bible is the word of God. Now I know there are lies in it, not that God tells it, God just reports it. The good, the bad, and ugly. I believe that the Bible is God's inspired word everywhere. The Bible does not contain the word of God. The Bible is the word of God. So I believe it. Dr. Smith: Even the maps, I believe it. And I studied the map. I looked at Corinth. I saw that it was on an isthmus. The widest part of that isthmus was 25 miles. The most narrow part was four miles and Corinth was on that narrow part of the isthmus. There is, on the east, the Aegean Sea and sailors would come down the Aegean Sea in route to Italy where they would take and sell their goods, coast to go all the way down to the southern peninsula, the Peloponnesus. It was dangerous. It was another 250 miles to go there. In fact, it said that sailors who would take that trip down to the southern peninsula would write a will because it was so arduous and so dangerous. But then they found a way. There was a port on the east of the Aegean Sea known as [Lechaio 00:32:33] or rather known [Sincrea 00:32:35] and on the west known as Lechaio. And they would take the ships and bring them to the port and unload them on skids, make a tramway and roll them across, past Corinth, that little four mile strip and there'd be a larger ship on the other side and they could take and put the [inaudible 00:33:00] on that ship and sail it on to their destination. Dr. Smith: Well they did that for decades and they did that for centuries, but finally in 1899 a canal was dug between these two ports, between these two seas, the Aegean and the Ionian Sea. And now, we go there every other year, ships sail through because it's much more economical. It's quicker, it's shorter, it's less dangerous to go through because that canal connects the Aegean Sea and the Ionian Sea. I see the Aegean Sean and the Ionian Sea as gifts of the spirit, but for them to be really efficient there needs to be a canal of love that joins them together. Dr. Smith: That's why I keep saying that when love, a fruit of the spirit, is governed by the gifts of the spirit, the church of Christ is edified while God is glorified. There has to be that canal that takes and joins together these two bodies of gifts so that they can be immensely effective. Paul says here, "I've been in the suburbs, now. I'm coming downtown to the techs. I know you were wondering about that, but I needed to spend a little time in the suburbs and I'm going to have to rush through this. I've already told you that I'm not going to say anything that you haven't heard before, but I just want to remind you of what you've conveniently, Robert Smith, forgotten and deliberately ignored." Paul says, and he takes it. He said, "let me take and show yourself." Because any time you take and read Paul's writings, it's really like you're reading somebody else's mail and what has happened is that the mail has been downloaded from Paul's letter for all ages to see. And we're reading it. And it's like Paul is writing to 21st century Christians. Dr. Smith: Paul says, "Now, first of all, I need to take a selfie. I want you to see myself." Verses 1-3. And I don't want you to laugh. This is all I've got. It's a flip phone. It's the best I can do, but Paul said, "Look, I want to take a selfie of myself." Verses 1-3. "Whatever you think of me, though I speak with the tongues of men." That is, Though I speak with great eloquence. If I use the greatest rhetorical strategies, the sages of the ages and have not love but the tongues of men and of angels, angelic language." You remember Paul, in 2 Corinthians 12:1 and following talks about a man he knew 14 years ago who went to the third heaven and he stayed up there. He says, "I don't know the man was taken in body or a spirit. Only God knows that." But he says, "When he came back, God declared a moratorium on speech." God pushed the mute button and he was not allowed to talk about what he had seen. Paul says, "If I could speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but if I did not have love, then I become as a sounding brass or tinkling symbol." Dr. Smith: Those are musical instruments that were used in those pagan places of worship and so the new converts would understand that you're talking about incoherence, you're talking about a lack of clarity. And that's what Paul is saying. "If you don't have love, are you able to do all of that? You are just absolutely making noise." Verse 2, "Though, I have the gift of prophecy." That's the alternative gift for Paul in first Corinthians 14 as the spirituals who love the phenomenal gifts, they're static gifts. They chose glossolalia. Dr. Smith: Paul says, "No. What we really need, and I speak in tongues more than any of you, but what really we need is prophesy." Forth telling as it speaks to us now and fore telling, predicting what will take place in the future. "If I had the gift of prophesy and didn't have love, if I understood all mysteries", the mysteria according to Deuteronomy 29:29. The secret things belonging to God. "If God let me in on this secret, even to the point that when the parousia would come, that is when Jesus would come back again. And angels don't even know that. If I had all of the heavily secrets, but if I did not have love, if I understood all mysteries. If I had all knowledge. If I knew everything that was to know about everything, and if I had all faith so I could speak to that mountain and tell that mountain go and jump into the sea, the mountain would commit suicide if I had that kind of faith. But if I didn't have love, I'm nil, I'm nothing." Dr. Smith: He said, "Let me take another selfie. Though I would bestow all my goods to feed the poor. If I fed every poor person in Haitia, Haiti, every poor person in Africa, every poor person in India, every poor person in Asia, every ppor person in the world. And if I took and gave my body to be burned and stepped into a fiery furnace and I didn't have love, it profits me nothing." Dr. Smith: Paul takes another selfie, lest. I don't get to it. He comes down to verse 11 he says, "When I was a child, I spake 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 Paul is taking us back to his childhood days. There he is in Tarsus of Cilicia. There he is having his bar mitzvah where he becomes a son of the law, son of Abraham. There he is sitting at the feet of the greatest rabbinical teacher that time Gamaliel. There he is. Dr. Smith: But when he grew up, he grew up. When he was encountered by the Lord on the Damascus road. Before he was given orders, now he's taking orders. "Lord, what do you want me to do?" Before he was stopping people from preaching, but now he starts preaching himself. Before he was a man who was the church's number one public enemy, but now he is the church's number one public defender. And Paul said, "But when I became a man," and it took Paul a while, because I think we'd like to make our biblical heroes, plastic saints, mannequins, that they grow, that they really get justified and now they are ready to be glorified. Paul had to grow. Dr. Smith: I wish I had time to talk to you about how he responded to John Mark, who departed from him and Barnabas during the first missionary journey in Acts 15 and the first thing Paul says when John Mark wants to go on the second one is, "No, he's not going. He's got a little yellow streak behind his back." And yet Paul is saying that love suffers long and is kind. Paul said, "No." Now if I had a choice of pastors, initially, between Paul and Barnabas, it would be Barnabas, the Son of Consolation. But Paul matured so that he says in 2 Timothy 4:11, "Timothy come before winter, but don't come alone. I do want you to bring my books and my parchment. And it's a little chilly. Bring my coat, but bring John, Mark my son, because he is profitable to me in ministry." He has matured, he has grown. Dr. Smith: Paul says in verse number 12, "Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face-to-face" No glass in first century AD. Bronze, metal stack was polished so you could see your face and see yourself, but it was always a distorted view. And Paul is saying right now that's the best we can do in time. There is an estimation. There is an approximation. You don't really see like you're going to see. You see through a glass dimly right now, but then face to face. Paul is alluding, I'm sure, to Exodus, verse 11 where the Bible says that the Lord talked to Moses face-to-face, panim el panim, face-to-face. "Now I know in part, but then I'm going to be known even as I also am known. Right now I am becoming who I am. I'm already blameless, but I'm becoming that. I'm becoming that. I've been declared sinless and guiltless, but when I look at my behavior, certainly there's an imputation of justification, but the impartation will come in glorification because then I will become all that God has a plan for me to be, because I'll be glorified then and I'll stand before him. I'll be known even as also I am known. And now abideth." Dr. Smith: And I'll let you finish the rest of it there, about another nine verses that I just love to talk about. But after 53 and a half years, I'm learning that you can't sell the ocean in one day and I'm learning that a sermon can have eternal implications without it being everlasting in duration. And therefore, let me go on and finish this. And now abideth, faith, hope, love. Abideth. These three, but the greatest of these is love." Then we've been conjecturing and guessing and splitting theological hairs over why love is the greatest. In fact, the Greek says greater. The greater. Hope and faith both have expiration dates. Dr. Smith: And when time has ended an eternity future starts, we will no longer need faith. This [inaudible 00:43:07] says it well, "Oh Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight." We will not walk by faith. We will walk by saints and we will no longer need hope because, why do you need the hope when you see the realization? So faith really is that courage to look at today as a living reality so that the not yet becomes already. And hope is that courage to see beyond circumstances and to grasp what God is doing in the world today. Faith and hope have expiration dates. Faith and hope have to have some kind of object. You can't have faith in faith. You can't have hope in hope, there must be an object. Jesus says, "If you're going to really have faith in Mark 11:22 you must have faith in God." He says, "Have faith in God." And hope must have an object. For the Psalmist, the Sons of Korah in that maskil in Psalm 42:5 says, "Hope thou in God." Dr. Smith: And I'm here to tell you that my hope has an object and my faith has an object. My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name. On Christ, the solid rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand. But love does not even need an object, for it is an object. For God loves himself in the social trinity. And we sing a song by George Matheson. You see, he was born in 1842 and died in 1906. At 20 years of age he was engaged to be marriage, but he began to lose his sight and he told his fiance that I'm losing my sight. Well, after pondering, she decided that she did not want to live with someone that was going to be blind for the rest of their lives. She broke up the engagement and it broke his heart. Well, his sister, by providential arrangement decided to be his caregiver. And for 20 long years she took care of her brother. But 20 years later she decided to get married. Dr. Smith: Oh yeah. He was disappointed, but he understood. The night before the wedding, he picked up his pen of inspiration and dipped it in the ink of illumination and wrote these words, "Oh, Love that will not let me go. I rest my weary soul in thee. And give thee back the life owe that in thy oceans depths did flow may richer, fuller be. Oh, yeah. He was forsaken, but God embrace me because He was forsaken." I'm going to leave you alone now, but I hear Paul saying in Romans 8:32, "God who spared not his own Son, but gave him up for us all. How graciously, how freely will he not give us all things?" Dr. Smith: I know that God would not give up George and Matheson and he would not give up Robert Smith because he had to give up his Son. And Jesus came from God by being sent in the incarnation. Jesus was forsaken by God at the crucifixion, but Jesus was raised at the resurrection. And one of the days when it's all over, when hope and faith have given up their service, turned in their license, turned in their service report, love will be right there. I was sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful shore, very deeply staying within, sinking the rise no more. But, the master of the sea, he heard my despairing cry. From the waters lifted me. Now safe am I. Love. Kristen Padilla: You've been listening to the Beeson podcast. Our theme music is written and performed by Advent Birmingham of the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our announcer is Mike Pasquarello. Our cohost are Doug Sweeney and myself. Kristen Padilla, please subscribe to the Beeson podcast at beesondivinity.com/podcast or on iTunes.