Tuesday, July 25, 2006
"Love does not behave rudely" (1 Corinthians 13:5).
IDEA: Love has good manners.
PURPOSE: To help listeners understand why good manners and love go together.
We have conventions on evangelism and mini-tours to Israel.
Let’s have a convention devoted to good manners!
How long would it last?
Would anyone sign up to come?
I. We tend to confuse good manners with etiquette.
Americans have seldom held etiquette in high regard.
The word etiquette is the French word meaning ticket. In the days of French royalty, common people sometimes gained an audience with the king or queen. The visitor was given a card or ticket of instruction on proper court behavior: how to enter, when to bow, when to speak, how to leave. So etiquette came to mean the rules that govern us when we meet and greet and eat.
Americans, influenced by the frontier, often resent and reject many of those rules of etiquette as false or insincere.
Manners are more than the rules of etiquette.
Manners are the “manner” in which we interact with other people.
All of us have manners -- good manners, bad manners, or something in between.
What does all of this have to do with 1 Corinthians 13:5?
II. Love is not rude (1Corinthians 13:5).
Even people who do not know the rules of etiquette can be gracious, considerate, and polite.
Henry Drummond said, “You can put the most untutored persons into high society, and if they have a reservoir of love in their hearts, they will not behave themselves in an unseemly manner. They simply cannot do it.”