INTRODUCTION:

1. In this last weekend of summer, let me share a train of thought I once had. I sat in my study and thought about the summer vacations our family used to go on when I was a kid. I’m telling you, those were times of the most frustrating agony and the most fond memories. Of course, these memories are the memories of a child, with all the distortions of a child’s memory.

2. If you are old enough to remember the days of route 66 and filling stations instead of gas stations, and then if your summer vacation times were like ours, then you will remember the agony that came during travel time.

3. It is simply amazing how automobiles could be transformed into cruel instruments of torture by fathers at the beginning of a vacation, only to turn them right back into normal cars as soon as you get home.

4. I wonder if all fathers scream and yell at their kids and wives while packing up the car, going back and checking through the house to make sure that nothing is left on, so you can leave at the most ridiculous hours of the morning.

5. And then, as you go driving across the country the car would become a prison and a hothouse. No air conditioning in cars when I was a kid. No bathrooms at conveniently located rest stops, either.

6. My dad mastered the art of keeping on those narrow two lane highways with his left hand and slapping my little brother and me with his right hand . . . to keep us from crying and fussing because we needed to go to the bathroom so bad we were in pain. Mom was asleep.

7. And then our arrival. Whether we lived in North Dakota, South Dakota, or the southern tip of Florida, we seemed always to manage to arrive in Wheeler, Texas at three o’clock in the morning. I always wondered why dad never cared that he woke my grandparents up at that wee hour, but I always got a spanking if I woke him up at that time of the morning.

8. Anyway, we would always sit around the kitchen table while my sweet grandmother would fix a big breakfast for us so we could go to sleep. Of course, they would have to stay up another hour or two, cause it would be time for the morning chores. Wouldn’t do them any good to try and get back to sleep for just an hour or so.

9. Wonder why grandmom and granddad were always tired and irritable the first day we visited them? But things settled down and everyone had a good time eating them out of house and home.

10. One time, I think I was about six years old, there was an emergency. About an hour after sundown the grownups noticed that my little brother, Greg, was missing. I think Mom went out and screamed for him, as only she could do, but he didn’t answer.

11. They waited a little longer for him, not knowing whether to be mad at him or scared for him. You see, my little brother was the kind of kid who listened only when he felt like listening. If he didn’t want to stop doing what he was doing he would just tell my folks he didn’t hear them call for him.

12. Well, it was getting really late and still no Greg, so they organized a search party looking and calling everywhere on that farm they imagined he could be. But when they all gathered back, still no Greg.

13. I seem to remember that they stood on the cement slab out in front of the house, under a light that had a million bugs and gnats flying around it. They discussed where he might be until they ran out of ideas. But when everyone paused for a while and the crickets stopped chirping, they heard something.

14. It was a very faint sound coming from the barn, so we all rushed over to see what was making it. Shouldn’t have been anything in there except the Ford tractor.

15. Well, when we got over there, by the light from the farm house that shined in, we all saw my little brother sitting in the metal seat of a that little Ford tractor, with his hands on the wheel, going "Urdn, urdn, urdn." All the time they had been looking for him and yelling and screaming for him to answer he had been in that barn, with a little straw cowboy hat on, playing tractor.

16. Oh, you’ve never seen a group of people so happy. And my folks were so delighted that nothing was wrong with him that they blistered his behind and put him to bed to show it. Then the grownups and I went into the kitchen and they talked about how scared for him they had been.

17. Now, my brother deserved to get spanked cause he was my little brother. No, because he did not heed the calls of his parents. But, other than that, his behavior was just what you would expect from a little boy. Just as happy as he could be sitting in that tractor seat, going through the motions, not getting a single thing done.

18. Folks, though there is nothing wrong with a child pretending to function and not actually accomplishing anything, God expects more of His children. Amen? But how many of you simply go through the motions? Each one in his or her own little Gospel tractor, pretending to be out in the Father’s field which is white unto harvest, but actually doing nothing, in the barn. Just like my little brother, except instead of saying "Urdn, urdn, urdn," you say "Praise the Lord" or "Amen."

19. The Corinthians were like that. They just sat around on their tractors and didn’t really do anything for God. Oh, they talked about "ministering," but they didn’t accomplish anything, you see.

20. And the reason they didn’t accomplish anything was because they never did get around to turning their little Ford tractors on. They were too busy going "Urdn, urdn, urdn."

21. In our text for this evening the apostle Paul begins to take this subject of spiritual gifts and put things into perspective. And the way he does this is to set spiritual gifts against the backdrop of that which is really and truly important to Christian service...love.

22. Folks, let’s pretend love is a little Ford tractor. And let’s each pretend to be my little brother, Greg. Then we’ll see how the apostle Paul attempts to persuade us how necessary it is that our little Ford tractor is running to get the job done for Christ.

23. Distilled down to one sentence: You can’t accomplish anything for God without love. And in First Corinthians 12.31-13.3, Paul shows this to us, first, by showing love’s importance and, second, by showing love’s impact.

24. Let’s stand together for the reading of God’s Word:

1. This evening we have seen how critically important love is to the cause of Christ. And though spiritual gifts are important, it’s this thing called love which is vital, which is indispensable, which cannot be substituted. It is the one ingredient in the recipe which cannot be eliminated.

2. Next week we’re going to begin to learn exactly what love is. And I am very sure that young lovers, that husbands and wives, that teens, and all the rest of you, will discover some things about love that you didn’t know before.

3. Some of you will come to understand that you have never given love. Tragically, some of you will also discover that, apart from God’s love given to you, you have never received love. Not real love anyway.

4. Perhaps you are here this evening and when you came in the front door you were in hot pursuit of knowledge. Or maybe you were in hot pursuit of the development of or the discovery of your spiritual gifts.

5. I want you to listen to a man who has learned some, but by no means all, of the hard lessons on this subject. There is something to be sought after more than knowledge of every Bible related subject. There is something more effective than the most effective spiritual gifts.

6. It’s love. Do you want to sit in the seat of a little Ford tractor and just go urdn, urdn, urdn? Will that satisfy you? Or do you want to go out into the field and begin harvesting?

7. Unfortunately, many are content to urdn, urdn, urdn. But if you want your life to count for something, you’d better come to Church as often as you possible can and learn how to love people the Bible way.

8. Tired of feeling utterly worthless? You probably feel that way because you are worthless. But you don’t have to be worthless to the cause of Christ. By being a lover of the brethren and a lover of the lost you can become a vital cog in the machinery, an important link in the chain. Only then will you begin to benefit from giving of yourself.

9. How does one going about doing this? Turn to Galatians 5.22: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love." Real love is a by product of the unencumbered presence of the Holy Spirit.

10. If you are a Christian and you don’t have love, there’s a sin problem that is grieving and quenching the Spirit of God. Deal with that and He will give you love.

11. But if you are not saved .......