Love Is Not Irritable

Hey. Good morning. Well, I’m so glad you’re here for this message today. We’re studying these days the greatest words on love that were ever written in one corinthians 13. And I’m reading this passage every day throughout this series.

I hope you are, too. We’re rescuing this passage from the clenches of romantic captivity, from weddings and flowers and frilly dresses that never get worn again, and overly long toasts and garter throwings. Because love is to be the criteria of everything we do. Spiritual maturity is measured by love, period. Paul does not write this passage as a valentine to Corinth.

He’s actually writing this passage because they are actually terrible at love. And we looked at how the basic message he sends is, do the opposite of what you would normally do. We’ve been learning that love requires the acquisition of character. We often think, well, I’d be more loving if God would just give me more loving people. But Paul doesn’t say, go find more loving people to be around.

He says, commit to allowing God to grow you into a more loving person. Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. To love means that I have this inner orientation where through the power of God, I will and I work for the good of another person.

And here’s the text that we’re gonna look at in this message. Love is not irritable. And that’s actually the entire message. You know how sometimes you hear a sermon and someone will ask you afterwards, what was it about? And sometimes you’re like, well, I don’t know.

And that’s kind of frustrating for me. But this is one of those messages where I promise you will know what it’s about. Love is not irritable. Say it with me. Love is not irritable.

This is needed because life is full of irritants. An irritant is anything that causes you frustration. A boss’s unreasonable request, a poor service at a restaurant, a relative who is deliberately rude, a co worker who makes you look bad in a meeting, you’re running late, traffic is terrible. Someone deliberately and arrogantly cuts in front of you, and you find yourself seized with the desire to gesture at them in a non faith based way. That’s the irritation.

The number one irritant in life, of course, is other people. Sometimes we strive to be something we strive to be as a church is a welcoming place for everyone. We want everyone to know that they are welcome at our church. We’ll do whatever we can to make people feel welcome. Everyone’s welcome here.

It’s true. But it’s also true that everyone is irritating here. Paul says love is not irritable. Notice he doesn’t say love never gets angry. Anger is an emotion we experience when we feel frustrated.

And the purpose of anger is to provide the energy that you need to deal with the frustration. Irritability is a mood. Moods are longer lasting than emotions. A mood is a predisposition or a tendency to have a certain kind of emotion. Generally speaking, I would say there are two kinds of moods.

There are good moods and there are bad moods. Well, irritability would be one form of a bad mood. Moods or moodiness is deeply related to our spiritual condition. When we seek transformation that’s beyond just our willpower or trying to manage our sinfulness, we want, really what we want is the transformation of our moods. If I really believe, like, if I really believe, like, I really believe in gravity, if I believe that there is a good goddess who created everything and that he is working out everything for the good, and that God is the person Jesus described, that he is joyful and that he is a generous being, and that I am his beloved child, and that all of my sins have been forgiven forever on the cross, and that nothing I can do can separate me from his love, and that his eye is on the sparrow, and so that he’s watching me.

And that surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. And that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And that because of the empty tomb, death has lost its sting. And that God is able to do immeasurably, exceedingly more than I could ever even ask or imagine. If I believe these things, what mood will I be in?

I’ll be in a good mood. Love and joy and peace will be the default mode. If I’m mostly in an irritable mood, my mind is probably thinking about different thoughts than these thoughts. By the way, who’s in charge of your mind? Like who runs the programming department of your thoughts?

Who is responsible for deciding how you will think or what you will be focused on throughout the day? That would be you. This is very important. When we think about love. The greatest and ultimate freedom is the ability to decide what will occupy my mind.

The greatest and most important freedom in your life, which no one can take away from you, is the ability to focus your thinking on what you want your focused to be. An irritable person is someone who is predisposed to become angry. Their body and their mind are poised for it. Their neurocircuitry has literally become wired for anger. This happens.

They habitually dwell on irritation producing thoughts without even noticing it. Where does an irritable person tend to get angry? Everywhere. At work, at home, at school, in the car, watching the news, on social media. We live in a world that’s sometimes described as an age of outrage.

In a restaurant, in a bar, at the store, in the parking lot, at the DMV. People even get mad. At church. It ticks me off.

Events that a joyful person would simply be able to accept with patience or try to help out with, or simply not even notice. So, for example, you’re at line at Pete’s or at Starbucks, and a customer at the counter is in a conversation with the barista, and they’re laughing and they’re teasing, and they’re making small talk. Now, if I’m in a hurry and I’m impatient and I’m just thinking about myself, I’m thinking, what’s the matter with this guy? Just get your coffee and get out. They ought to have a shot clock like they do in the NBA.

If you take too long, you don’t get the coffee. Like, no coffee for you. Or if I’ve died to myself, then I and Jesus are in line together, and I might be thinking what a good thing that this customer is, treating this barista with warmth and kindness and dignity, like any human being would like. That kind of inspires me. I’d like to make them laugh myself.

You see, it’s the exact same set of circumstances with just this difference. Love is not irritable. Again, Paul doesn’t write here. You try really, really hard not to be irritable. I don’t become not irritable by trying really, really hard to not be irritable.

I aim at living in and getting immersed in God’s love. For me, irritability is kind of a gateway drug. It leads to sarcasm and it leads to resentment, and over time, it destroys marriages. It can damage children. Eventually, it will lead to hostility and even violence.

Not all irritable people are violent, but for sure, all violent people are irritable. They often start with irritability, and love is not that way. Love is not irritable. By the way, what is this message about? Love is not irritable.

What is it that produces an irritable character? Well, this is connected to the very next observation that Paul makes about love in one corinthians 13, love keeps no record of wrongs. What does that mean, no record of wrongs? Well, we are all record keepers. We all have certain memories and certain thoughts that we store up in our minds and we bring back to our awareness on a regular basis.

Irritable people keep a record of when they’ve been wronged and they do this in their minds. I do this by recalling and even rehearsing, playing it over and over in my mind like a rerun, the wrong things that have been done to me. And I replay those things in my memory and I feel again that surge of emotion that I felt when I was unjustly hurt. And I enjoy this sense of moral superiority that this gives me over the person who potentially hurt me. And I enjoy indulging in self pity.

I find other people so that I can tell the story to, so that it reinforces my victimhood and it encourages my moral outrage. I think about it all night sometimes. I lie awake at night thinking about it. By the way, I know all about this because my spiritual gift is pouting.

If I could remember Bible verses as well as I could remember times when people wronged me, I would have the entire Bible memorized by now. Of course, after a while, the playlist just goes on autopilot. In my mind, it’s like Spotify. It’s like your mind has this greatest hits playlist and it just replays it. And after a while you don’t even have to think about it anymore.

It’s just on autopilot. And you might wonder, why in the world would anyone do this? Well, there’s a wonderful writer, Frederick Buchner. He put it like this. Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun.

To lick your wounds. To smack your lips over grievances long past. To roll over your tongue. The prospect of bitter confrontation still to come. To savor till the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back.

In many ways, it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you. Of course, sin is always that way. It’s forbidden by God because it destroys human beings that we sin against, and it destroys us.

Now here’s what’s critical. Love keeps records. Love does not keep records of wrongs. It keeps other records because we’re all record keepers. God has given us this amazing gift of memory and record keeping.

It’s part of what creates who we are. It’s part of our identity. Love remembers gifts from a grateful God or from to be grateful to God. Qualities in other people that I really admire, moments of joy that I get to savorous suffering that I might actually be able to help with or do something about injustice that I might actually be able to help relieve. Love remembers seasons of joy.

Love remembers reasons for hope. Love keeps a record of rights. Paul put it like this. Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. You know, sometimes people think, well, we should only be thinking about the things that are in the Bible.

And I want to say, to have your mind immersed in the Bible, in scripture, is a tremendously beneficial thing. But it’s fascinating that the Bible itself points us to thinking about other things all over the place, because whatever is good and right and true and noble and admirable is all over the world every day, in creation, in other people, in wonderful books and stories. God invites us to have our minds dwell on those things. The greatest freedom in your life is the freedom to decide what you will think about, what your mind will dwell on. An irritable person will place their mind on the wrong stuff.

Paul actually uses the same word for in Philippians, this passage that we just read, and in one corinthians 13, we’re commanded here to focus our minds. Indulging in wrong thinking is sin. It just is. No one can see it. We don’t get in trouble for it.

But it’s sinhouse. And this matters because God has created your mind. God has created your brain to be a record keeper. Every time you think a new thought, new synapses get formed, literally every thought you think. And it makes it a lot easier for you to think that thought more quickly the next time.

And so love thinks excellent thoughts. That’s why loving actions and loving words flow more automatically out of a loving person, because they reflect on those thoughts. Those are the things that are going on in their minds. Love keeps excellent records. In love, I live in the reoccurring thought that I am loved by my creator God.

And then that leads me to look for other people who I might show love to. That’s the question of love. Who can I show kindness to? You know, when we lived in San Diego years ago, a friend of mine and I would go to a restaurant called Patton Oscars. If you’ve never been to Patton Oscars, it’s kind of like the french laundry, just a little different.

It’s actually nothing like the french laundry. A lot of people who work at Patton Oscars are facing serious challenges in life, and a lot of them are kind of struggling to get by. Well, our server, and I’ll call her Susie. She was one of those people. She faced harder challenges and showed more resilience than a lot of people.

Like, my life is embarrassingly easy compared to her life. When I think about how hard my life is, like, it’s embarrassing by comparison. So lunch at Patton Oscars cost about $10. So just on a whim, we left a $20 tip. And you would have thought that I offered to put her kids through school.

She was so joyful. I’ve never seen someone with so much gratitude in my life. And the next time we were there, we gave her an even bigger tip, and she offered to marry me. Whenever we went to Patton Oscars, we sat in Susie’s section, partly because she would have shot anyone who tried to wait on us, because we just kept giving her bigger and bigger tips. And she looked forward to when we came to.

But you know who looked forward to it more? I did, because it was so much fun. We used to save money to go eat at Patton Oscars. In fact, if you give me a tip after the sermon, I’ll save it to give to Susie. Like, someday we’ll take an offering and we’ll bring her a gift, a tiff from our whole church.

When we were at Patton Oscars. This is so interesting. When we were there, if Susie was busy and she didn’t bring our food in time or she didn’t refill our drinks in time, do you think I got irritated? No, not at all. Love is patient.

Love is kind. Take your time, relax. Like, for those few moments when I was at Patton Oscars, no kidding. I was a great guy. It was like I was the man that I was supposed to be because of Susie.

What if I was like that all the time? What if I had that mind? What if that was my mood? Love keeps a record. You can do this.

You can start doing this now. This is part of the secret of living in love through the power of God. Love keeps records of rights, not wrongs, joy, gratitude. Like, why wouldn’t you do that? Admiration, beauty, service, virtue, care in the face of suffering, courage in the face of injustice, laughing babies, lingering sunsets, good food, the aging faces of saints who have followed God for a long time.

Love says, when can I go back to Patton Oscarse? How can I find another susie? Who can I show kindness to? Love is not irritable. You know, it seems like such a trivial word, irritable.

But a soul can live or die by it. A soul can hang on it. Israel had won a great battle against their enemies and people were celebrating. They were singing songs about how King Saul had slain his thousands and David had slain his ten thousands. And we’re told in the Bible Saul was very angry.

This refrain displeased him greatly. What kind of mood was Saul in? He was in a bad mood. In particular, he was irritable. You could easily translate this phrase.

This refrain irritated him greatly. Why was he in a bad mood? Because there were certain thoughts that had taken root in his mind. Thoughts like the people like David more than they like me. No one wants to give me credit for being king.

I’ll probably never get the credit that I really deserve. David is probably going to take my crown. It’s my crown. I’m going to hold onto my crown at all cost. I can’t share it with anyone.

Saul brooded over envy and resentment and fear and pride. Notice he could have been in a great mood. I mean, Israel just had, they had just won and he’s the king and David worked under him. David was loyal to him. So he could have been thinking thoughts of great joy and gratitude.

But his habitual thoughts meant that precisely the conditions that would have produced joy and gratitude in another leader produced resentment in him, and that ripened into hate. And if you read this story, you’ll find he’s consistently in a foul mood and it leads him to hate. Eventually, he tries to kill David. His son, Jonathan, becomes David’s best friend. When Jonathan found out what his dad was doing, Jonathan confronted his dad, King Saul, because that’s another thing that love does.

But his dad threw a spirit. Jonathan tried to kill his own son. And here’s what happened next. The text says, jonathan got up from the table in fierce anger because he was grieved at his father’s shameful treatment of David. The Bible, of course, is not a book of moral object lessons, but I think we’re to understand in this case, in this case, Jonathan’s anger was a good and noble thing.

Saul was counting on Jonathan being afraid. You know, fear is a high energy negative emotion that will cause you to flee. It will cause you to run away. Anger is a high energy negative emotion that inclines you to approach a problem head on. Jonathan does that.

It’s a good thing that he didn’t get afraid. It’s a good thing that he got angry instead of afraid. Jonathan actually saves his friend David. And you might be wondering, well, when am I entitled to fierce anger? Because that sounds kind of fun.

Well, if your father tries to kill your best friend, and when you talk to him about it, he heaves a spear at your head. Well, I think that’s a healthy response. A lack of anger. Listen to this. A lack of anger when anger is called for is as serious a problem as the presence of anger when anger is not called for.

But always, always managing anger is an enormous challenge. And it’s amazing that even though Jonathan was fiercely angry at his father in this moment, he ended his life by fighting loyally by his father’s side. And it’s more amazing that when Saul and Jonathan were dead, David asked, is there anyone in the house of Saul that I can show kindness to? We talked about this a couple weeks ago. Young Mephibosheth was who David could show kindness to.

Mephibosheth was the grandson of King Saul, so he should have been David’s rival and enemy. Yet there are four times in this little story. It says, mephibosheth ate at the king’s table. Why would David do this? Well, David told us in his most famous psalm, psalm 23, he said, the lord is my shepherd.

I lack nothing. Then he goes on to say, you prepare a presence. You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies. David said to himself, I think I’ll take mephibosheth to Patton Oscars. I think I’ll feed him.

Everyone would think that he would be my enemy. He’s the son of the former kingdom. He could be my rival to the throne. But I think I’ll take him to Patton Oscars. Love is patient.

Love is kind. Love endures all things. Love is long suffering. Love keeps no record of wrongs. Love is not irritable.

It’s amazing. It’s a lot easier to talk about love than it is to actually do it, isn’t it? That’s because of one other difficult, courageous step that love takes, that irritation never will. Love will do something, that resentment and bitterness and holding a grudge, refuse to do. It involves a metaphor, kind of a parable that often floats around, particularly in recovery circles, for people who are dealing with an addict.

One version of it goes like, there’s a group of addicts on a boat called recovery, and they’re sailing to sobriety, to freedom, to moral sanity. And a woman, Mary, gets to the dock and sees that a boat has left and she’s missed it. And everyone on the boat yells for her to dive in, to swim to the boat. Come on, Mary, dive in. Swim to the boat.

And she does. She dives in the water. She’s having trouble swimming, though, and she starts to go down. And it becomes apparent to her that she’s holding onto this rock. And everyone from the boat yells, drop the rock, Mary.

Drop the rock. And she looks down, and this rock is all of her resentments. It’s all of her bitterness, it’s all of her wounds and all of the wrong, terrible things that people have done to her or that she thinks people have done to her through all of the years of her life. The rock is her pride. The rock is her stubbornness.

And she thinks to herself, if I don’t have this rock, who will I be? My rock is what makes me feel superior to the person who wronged me. My rock is my excuse for my miserable life. And then, in a moment of moral sanity, that’s a gift from God, she thinks, why would I cling to this thing that makes me so miserable? Why am I holding onto this stupid rock?

It’s destroyed my joyous. It’s embittered my spirit. It’s poisoned my past. It’s ruined my future. It’s totally killing me.

And so she lets go of it, and she’s free. And there’s this lightness about her, about her body and about her spirit. And she swims to the boat, and she climbs on board, and everyone cheers, and they see another guy jump off the rock, jump off the dock and join them. And he starts to go down. And it’s Mary who.

Who yells, drop the rock. Drop the rock. Love is not irritable. Love keeps no record of wrongs. Love drops the rock.

And the place for all those rocks is the cross. I mean, that’s the place where sin met love and love won. That’s the place where I receive ultimate forgiveness. And if I’m going to receive ultimate forgiveness from God at an infinite cost of the life of his son, how could I refuse to forgive another human being for a really finite debt when I’ve been forgiven an infinite debt at the cost of Jesus Christ? So I’m dropping the rock.

Like, all of the resentment, all of the bitterness, all the hurts, all of my wounds, all the grudges, all these things that, you know, I foster this horrible sense of superiority with or self pity with. Drop the rock. Make this day the day that you drop the rock. So I’m asking everyone in our church, maybe it’s in a little irritating rock and it’s just festering a little bit. Maybe it’s a really heavy rock.

I understand that. Maybe you’re not even sure what it will mean for your life if you drop it. Maybe someone has abused you or damaged you or betrayed you and they haven’t repented. And so you’re not able to enter into a relationship of trust with them. You’re not able to reconcile because they’re not willing to acknowledge the truth or have a contrite or repentant heart.

And I don’t know what all that means. There is no formula for all of that. But one thing I do know is this, and you have to listen to this. You can still drop the rock. You can do it today.

You have to do it today. Just say, God, I’m putting this problem. God, I’m putting this person, I’m putting this burden in your hands. I’m so tired of carrying this weight in my mind and in my soul. Day after day.

I need my hands to be free for other things. I’ll tell you something, it’s pretty frustrating to go through a chunk of time with your hands, not being able to do anything else because you’re holding onto the stupid rock. And if that’s true, if your hands are holding onto a rock physically, I promise you it is infinitely truer for your soul and the spiritual burden that you carry. You can’t carry it anymore. You have to drop it because it’ll kill you.

It’ll kill your heart. I know we’re all kinds of, you know, we’re very reluctant to let our rocks go. They make us miserable. They kill us. We hate to let them go.

And so I want to tell you why this is so important. The word rock is actually a really important word. It’s in the Bible a lot. It’s used dozens and dozens of times, interestingly enough, to refer to our God. The psalmist says this, truly, my soul finds rest in God.

My salvation comes from him. Truly, he is my rock and my salvation. The rock in the ancient world was often a picture. They didn’t have drills or explosives, so a rock was a picture of strength, a strong foundation. The idea here is I don’t hold the rock.

The rock holds me. God is my rock. God is my strength. God is my foundation. Jesus said, the wise man builds his house on the rock.

The psalmist said, lead me to the rock that is higher than I see. Here’s the choice. You can cling to the rock of resentment and bitterness and irritation, or you can cling to the rock that is higher than I, but you can’t do both. You have to choose. And I’m challenging everyone in our church, starting with me to drop the rock.

To drop the rock of resentment, the grudge, the smoldering irritation, whatever it is, make today the day that you drop the rock and you cling to God, because he will bless you if you do. All right, let me pray for you as the worship team comes to lead us in a closing song.

God, we’re so grateful that through what Jesus did on the cross for us, that we receive forgiveness for the sin in our lives, for the ways that we have hurt you or betrayed you or even hurt other people or betrayed them, that you set us free from that. God, would you help us to set other people free from the burdens that we carry because of the hurt that they’ve inflicted on us and ultimately, God? You know, I know because I’ve experienced it. The one who is set free is really us. So would you lead us to that place where we’re free from those burdens, those rocks that we carry, the resentment, the irritation, whatever it is?

God, thank you. That love is not irritable. Help us to live that way. And I pray in Jesus name. Amen.