Amen, 1 Corinthians chapter number 4, the part of the chapter that I want to focus on
is there at the end when he talked about those that were puffed up, and we're going to come
back to 1 Corinthians 4, but if you would turn back in your Bibles to Proverbs chapter
number 8, Proverbs chapter number 8.
Now 1 Corinthians 4 talked a lot about being puffed up, and 1 Corinthians in general is
a book that deals a lot with that subject, and this morning I want to preach on the subject
of being puffed up and arrogant, puffed up and arrogant.
What does that mean?
Well, I'm going to show you to start with a variety of Old Testament scriptures that
will help us to understand what it means to be prideful, arrogant, puffed up, haughty.
The Bible says in Proverbs chapter 8 verse 13, first of all, it says, the fear of the
Lord is to hate evil.
Pride and arrogance and the evil way and the froward mouth do I hate.
So God's saying here that he hates pride.
He hates arrogance.
So we need to be very careful that we're not guilty of something that God hates so much.
Flip over to Proverbs 16, Proverbs chapter 16.
While you're turning there, I'll read for you Psalm 131 where the Bible reads, Lord,
my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty, neither do I exercise myself in great matters
or in things too high for me.
So arrogance, pride, being puffed up, it's when people think more highly of themselves
than they ought to think.
The Bible says in Proverbs 16, 18, pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before
a fall.
Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly than to divide the spoil with the
proud.
Go over to chapter 18.
So what we see here is that the opposite of pride is humility.
The opposite of being haughty and puffed up is to have a lowly heart.
The Bible says in Proverbs 18, 12, before destruction, the heart of man is haughty and
before honor is humility.
Jump over to Isaiah chapter 2, just a few pages to the right in your Bible, Isaiah chapter
2.
So the Bible teaches us that pride, arrogance, being puffed up and haughty is a path that
leads you to destruction.
You end up being destroyed, whereas being humble is a path that will bring you to great
honor and esteem.
Look at Isaiah chapter 2 verse 11.
The Bible reads, the lofty looks of man shall be humbled and the haughtiness of men shall
be bowed down and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.
For the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon everyone that is proud and lofty and
upon everyone that is lifted up and he shall be brought low.
Verse 17, and the loftiness of man shall be bowed down and the haughtiness of man shall
be made low and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.
So when we see the word lofty, we can think of what is known as a loft, right, in a house.
The loft, where is it?
It's up high.
And that's what it means to have loftiness.
It means that you think of yourself very highly and you lift yourself up and exalt yourself
above where God wants you.
And then God has to bring you down to where you belong.
Okay, the Bible says in chapter 3 verse 16, just flip over to the right in your Bible,
Moreover the Lord saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and notice these words
are all used together, proud, haughty, lofty, arrogant, puffed up.
It says, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with stretched forth necks.
Now what does this mean to walk with a stretched, you know they've got their chin way up in
the air and they're walking with stretched forth, they think that they're so cool is
what it says.
And walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go and making
a tinkling with their feet.
Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of
Zion and the Lord will discover their secret parts.
In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet
and their calls and their round tires like the moon, the chains and the bracelets and
the mufflers, the bonnets and the ornaments of the legs and the headbands and the tablets
and the earrings, the rings and nose jewels, the changeable suits of apparels and the mantels
and the wimples and the crisping pins.
The crisping pin is the curling iron by the way.
It says the glasses, really it really is, the glasses and the fine linen and the hoods
and the veils and it shall come to pass that instead of a sweet smell there shall be a
stink and instead of a girdle a rent and instead of well set hair baldness.
And instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth and burning instead of beauty, thy men shall
fall by the sword and thy mighty in the war and her gates shall lament and mourn and she
being desolate shall sit upon the ground.
Now God's pretty upset in this passage and he doesn't like pride.
Now there's nothing wrong with looking nice but if you're prideful, if you're arrogant,
if you're just adorning yourself with all these costly things in order to impress people
and lift yourself up and hey everybody look at me, look how great I am and think that
you're better than everyone, you know God can bring you down.
God can put a scab on you whenever he wants.
God can make your hair fall out whenever he wants.
That's what he's saying here.
I'll punish you.
I'll take away your beauty if it's going to puff you up, if it's going to make you arrogant,
if it's going to make you proud and think you're better.
See there are people in this world who are better looking than others but that doesn't
make them better than other people because honestly we can't really control the way that
we look in the sense of the way our face looks.
You know there are some things we can do to modify other parts of our bodies but I'm saying
you know if someone was born with an exceptionally beautiful appearance, is that really anything
for them to glory of or boast about?
No, it's just something that was given unto them.
Other people could be born with some kind of a defect or deformity or maybe they're
just not as good looking but that's not really through any fault of their own, is it?
And so it would be wicked for a person to get all arrogant and puffed up about their
appearance and think that they're better than others.
Look at chapter 5 just a few pages to the right and the reason I'm showing you all these
scriptures, this is all just by way of introduction then we're going to get into the New Testament
but this introduction is just to show you what it means to be proud, what it means to
be lofty and haughty.
And I think everybody can relate to what I just showed you.
You know the woman who's walking with a stretched neck and she's all just decked out with ornaments
and what does the Bible say in the New Testament about that?
It talks about women not being adorned with gold and jewels, pearls, costly array.
It says but it says that they should have the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit and
meekness is the exact opposite of pride and arrogance.
Being meek, being humble, lowly.
The Bible says in Isaiah 5, 14, therefore hell hath enlarged herself and opened her
mouth without measure and their glory and their multitude and their pomp and he that
rejoiceth shall descend into it and the mean man shall be brought down and the mighty man
shall be humbled and the eyes of the lofty shall be humbled.
Look at chapter number 10 verse 33.
While you're turning there, I'll read for you from Jeremiah.
We've heard the pride of Moab.
He is exceeding proud, his loftiness and his arrogance and his pride and the haughtiness
of his heart.
Chapter 10 verse 33 in Isaiah, behold the Lord of hosts shall lop the bow with terror
and the high ones of stature shall be hewn down and the haughty shall be humbled.
Look at chapter 13.
Do you see a pattern here where God is saying over and over and over again, you're proud,
I'm going to bring you down, you're lofty, you're arrogant, you're haughty, you're puffed
up, you're going down.
That's what he's saying over and over and over again and we need to realize that if
we want to be lifted up, we need to humble ourselves that God may exalt us in due time
as he sees fit but if we go around trying to lift ourselves up, trying to show everybody
how great we are and proclaim our own goodness, then God's going to bring us down and sometimes
he brings people down pretty hard if you read these scriptures.
Where did I return?
Chapter 16?
13.
Look at verse 11.
And I will punish the world for their evil and the wicked for their iniquity and I will
cause the arrogance of the proud to cease and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.
Look at chapter 16 verse 6.
Again, just over and over, just in these two couple books here, just Proverbs and Isaiah.
Over and over.
Look at verse 6.
We've heard of the pride of Moab.
He's very proud even of his haughtiness and his pride and his wrath but his lies shall
not be so.
And again, there's so many scriptures we could go on and on and on.
I don't want to beat a dead horse here.
If I were to show you every scripture that says, hey, if you're arrogant, if you're proud,
if you're lofty, God is going to bring you down.
Whosoever exalted themselves, the Bible says, shall be abased but whoso humbled themselves
shall be exalted.
I mean, there's so many scriptures that teach this.
So let's go to the New Testament now.
First Corinthians 4 where we started.
First Corinthians chapter 4.
While you're turning there, I'll read for you a couple of other scriptures.
Philippians 2, 3.
Let nothing be done through strife or vain glory but in lowliness of mind, let each esteem
other better than themselves.
So what's the Bible saying?
We should have a lowly attitude and put other people first.
Here, you go first.
You go ahead of me in line, not just, oh, I'm the most important one here.
Everybody step aside.
The Bible teaches that even Christ Jesus who thought it not robbery to be equal with God
made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in
the likeness of men.
Romans 12, 3.
For I say through the grace given unto me to every man that is among you not to think
of himself more highly than he ought to think but to think soberly according as God had
dealt to every man the measure of faith.
And you know and I know we've all come into contact with a lot of people who have a problem
in this area where they're just arrogant, puffed up, prideful.
They think that they're better than everyone else.
That's what this is talking about.
Now I have several points here from the New Testament and my first point is about people
who, number one, are puffed up with knowledge but they're not serving humbly.
Puffed up with knowledge but they're not serving humbly as the Bible instructs us to do.
Look at 1 Corinthians chapter 4 verse 14.
It's the apostle Paul defending himself against certain elements in the church of Corinth
and you find this theme a lot in both 1 and 2 Corinthians.
Look at 1 Corinthians 4, 14.
I write not these things to shame you but as my beloved sons I warn you.
Now why is he calling them his sons?
Because he had won them to Christ and he had begotten them in the faith.
Paul called people that he won to the Lord his sons and daughters in the faith because
he'd begotten them through Christ Jesus.
The Bible says in verse 15, for though you have 10,000 instructors in Christ, yet have
you not many fathers?
For in Christ Jesus I've begotten you through the gospel.
Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me.
For this cause have I sent unto you Timotheus who is my beloved son and faithful in the
Lord who shall bring you into remembrance of my ways which be in Christ as I teach everywhere
in every church.
Now some people would look at this and because they have a misguided misunderstanding view
of what it means to be proud, they'll say well Paul's being proud here.
Saying hey follow me, do things my way.
But here's the thing, Paul is in a legitimate position of an authority.
He's an apostle of Jesus Christ, not by the will of man but by the will of God.
He's called to be an apostle.
He's called to be a teacher of the Gentiles and so he is in a legitimate authority role
given him by Christ Jesus and he's saying look, you need to do things my way because
I'm teaching the true word of God here.
But he says in verse 18, now some of you, some are puffed up as though I would not come
to you.
But I will come to you shortly if the Lord will and will know not the speech of them
which are puffed up but the power.
For the kingdom of God is not in word but in power.
What will ye?
Will I come unto you with a rod or in love and in the spirit of meekness?
So what he's saying here is that the kingdom of God is not in word but in power.
So a lot of these people that are puffed up, what the Bible's saying is they talk a real
big talk but they don't have any power.
They don't really have any great deeds that they could point to.
All they really have is just knowledge and talk.
Now if you would flip over to chapter 8 of the same book there, 1 Corinthians chapter
8, and hopefully I can help you explain this point here.
Because remember point number 1 is that these people are puffed up with knowledge but they're
not serving humbly.
God wants us to serve humbly.
These people are puffed up with knowledge but they're not doing the serving.
Knowledge is great.
I mean the Bible over and over again praises gaining knowledge but what happens is people
who gain knowledge but they don't do the humble service, they get puffed up by the
knowledge.
Look what the Bible says in 1 Corinthians chapter 8 verse 1.
Now as touching things offered unto idols we know that we all have knowledge.
Knowledge puffeth up but charity edifieth and if any man think that he knoweth anything
he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know but if any man love God the same is known
of him.
God teaches here that there are people who think that they know a lot but they don't
know as much as they think.
He says they're puffed up by knowledge but he says actually because they're such a know-it-all
they actually know a lot less than what they ought to know and he says charity is what
edifieth, not just being puffed up with knowledge.
Now what does charity have to do with?
Well it has to do with caring about other people, putting other people first.
Charity comes from the same root word as our English word caring, charity.
Those two words are related.
In Spanish you say charity, you say caridad, you know it's like caring, okay?
It's love for other people.
Look at chapter 13 which is the charity chapter, 1 Corinthians 13 one, though I speak with
the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity I am become as sounding brass
or a tinkling cymbal.
And though I have the gift of prophecy, watch this, and understand all mysteries.
So is this a person who has knowledge?
And understand all mysteries and all knowledge and though I have all faith so that I could
remove mountains and have not charity I am nothing and though I bestow all my goods to
feed the poor and though I give my body to be burned and have not charity it profiteth
me nothing.
You say well how could anyone bestow their goods to feed the poor and give their body
to be burned and not have charity because they're not doing it out of love and caring
for people.
They're doing it, hey look at me everybody.
They give but they sound a trumpet as the hypocrites do before them.
They give so that everybody can see how great they are.
They give their body to be burned for personal aggrandizement and personal glory.
They don't have charity.
What does the Bible say about charity in verse number four?
Charity suffereth long and is kind.
Charity envieth not.
Charity vaunteth not itself.
Do you see that?
Charity is not puffed up.
What is the Bible saying here?
Charity doesn't call attention to itself say hey everybody look at me look how great I
am vaunting itself and puffing itself up.
So there are people out there who Paul's talking about in 1 Corinthians 4, 8 and 13 who are
puffed up with knowledge and words but they don't have the power.
They don't have the charity.
They're not doing the humble service for God.
You know what this makes me think of the career student type people.
The people who are just they're always in school.
They're always learning but they're not actually going out and doing any meaningful work for
people and doing something with their knowledge.
See the Bible says that we should not just be hearers of the word but we should be doers
of the word also.
You see when we do the word we are actually doing something that is profitable unto our
fellow man.
Why because we love our fellow man and we want to do something good for him not just
let's see how much knowledge I can gain and put on display and show everyone how smart
I am.
No no no the goal should be to get knowledge from the Bible so that we can use it to humbly
serve God not to show off how much we know or have all kinds of awards and papers on
the wall and about all of our knowledge and there are people who literally do virtually
nothing to serve others who do virtually nothing to win souls unto Jesus Christ and get people
out of hell.
They do virtually nothing to evangelize.
They do virtually nothing to help people and reach out and condescend to men of low
estate but what they do a lot of is tooting their own horn.
What they do a lot of is sitting in university classrooms and navel gazing with the theologians
and scholars of this world.
I wouldn't give you a nickel for these theologians and scholars who don't preach the gospel from
house to house in a poor area.
I wouldn't give you a nickel for them because their knowledge is worthless.
All it is doing is puffing them up.
You know what?
The people who actually know the Bible are the people who use the Bible because the Bible
says if any be a hearer of the word and not a doer he is like unto a man beholding his
natural face in a glass for he behold himself and goeth his way and straightway forgetteth
what manner of man he was but whoso looketh in the perfect law of liberty and continue
it therein being not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work.
This man shall be blessed in his deed.
Two kinds of people, forgetful hearers and doers of the work.
The Bible says the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life and he that winneth souls
is wise.
You're not going to convince me of the wisdom of someone who does not win souls.
You're not going to convince me of the wisdom of some guy who sits in some ivory tower somewhere
locked up in some library of some university somewhere puffing himself up with knowledge
but let him show out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom.
Let's go, that's a great scripture.
Where is that?
James 1?
Is that James 1?
Is that the end of James 1?
Help me out.
Is it James 3 or James 1?
Yeah, James 1.
It's a great scripture.
Well, that's the part about being a doer of the word.
Where's the one about let him show out of a good conversation his works?
Chapter 3.
Okay, there we go.
Yeah, here we go.
Chapter 3 verse 13.
This is a great verse.
Okay, look at this.
Who is a wise man and a dude with knowledge among you?
Let him show all of his test scores and let him show his degrees from institutions of
higher learning and let him show you his parlor tricks of how much trivia and knowledge he
has.
Let him show how much he can beat you at a game of trivial pursuit.
Is this what the Bible says?
No.
No, it says who is a wise man and a dude with knowledge among you.
Let him show out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom.
Basically, he shows you the work not like, hey, look at the work that I did.
No, no, you just see him doing the work.
He shows you his works without trying to show you.
He just shows it because he's just doing it.
That's what the Bible says.
These puffed up people, it's all about their knowledge and let me show you my knowledge.
Let me see how many theological terms I can drop like bombs on you.
Show you that you're on a completely different level than I am, buddy.
I mean, stupid, worthless words like, you know, this is really poor exegesis.
In fact, it's not even exegesis, it's eisegesis.
I mean, this is the kind of stupidity that these worthless theologians talk.
And they want to tell you about the theophany and the Christophany and the proto-evangelium
and instead of just talking to you about the story of the woman taken in adultery, they'll
talk to you about the pericope adulteria.
Oh, you're so wonderful.
No, shut up and show us your works with weakness, not with weakness, with meekness of wisdom
because they already have enough weakness to go around.
And you know what?
I don't want to know the words of these people that are puffed up.
I want to see the power.
I don't want to hear the words.
Show me the power.
And you know what the power of God unto salvation is?
The gospel of Jesus Christ.
And by the way, you know, I'm thinking of all these great verses and forgetting their
references.
What's the one where one of the minor prophets, I think it's Micah, he talks about being filled
with power.
Somebody find it.
Somebody get the smartphone cranking.
All right.
You know, Jesus said, the spirit of the Lord God is upon me because he's anointed me to
preach the gospel to the poor.
That's, you know, that was the evidence.
You know, when the spirit of the Lord came upon the early church in Acts chapter four,
they spake the word of God with boldness.
They're out winning souls, not sitting in a library.
Now, I can't help, and again, don't say that I'm against knowledge.
I'm all for knowledge that's being put into practice.
You know, I'm all for an electrician who knows a lot about the science and it knows
a lot about the theory and knows a lot about the technicalities of being an electrician.
You know what?
But I want to see him bend some conduit and run some wires and install some electrical
and not just get up and talk about it, right?
I want to see an electrician that's actually installing something.
Okay.
What is it?
Micah what?
Micah three eight.
All right.
Let's go to Micah three eight for some reason, even though it's not in the sermon.
Micah three eight.
But truly, okay, here we go.
Micah three eight.
I like this.
But truly I am full of power by the spirit of the Lord and of judgment and of might to
declare unto Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin.
So we see great power to preach the gospel and then here we see great power to preach
hard on sin.
But there's no power in this navel gazing, go down deep, stay down long, come up dry,
theology, scholarship.
And you know what?
These people are not as smart as you think they are and they're definitely not as smart
as they think they are because they think that they're infinite smart.
Okay.
But they're not, my friend.
Now, I hope this doesn't offend anybody, but you know, here's what I always think of.
Whenever I read this scripture in First Corinthians four where he says, you know, I don't want
to know their speech.
I want to know their power.
I always think of when it comes to weightlifting, okay, there are two types of sports associated
with weightlifting, okay?
There's bodybuilding and then there's powerlifting, right?
Who knows what I'm talking about?
Put up your hand if you're very familiar with these sports.
There's bodybuilding and then there's powerlifting.
Now here's what bodybuilding is.
Bodybuilding, am I losing a cuff link here?
Oh no, never mind, this is, oh yeah, I am losing a cuff link, all right.
So bodybuilding is this sport, and I use the term sport very loosely, where basically people
just compete in how they can make their bodies look.
You know, there's no performance involved.
It's just how they look.
And then for the bodybuilding competition, they basically get all oiled up and tanned
up and go out on a speedo and just kind of, you know, you know, and they pose for judges.
It's a weird sport.
It's a creepy sport because it's just all these dudes all oiled up in speedos just flexing
and look, it's total pride, it's total arrogance, it's total self-glorification.
Now then there's another sport, powerlifting, where it's like, okay, we're not just showing
off muscles to look at, ooh, look at those muscles, but they're actually lifting something.
And it's actually judged by how much can this guy lift?
How many pounds did you lift?
How strong are you?
See, strength is something that the Bible gives as a virtue.
You know, the Bible says a wise man is strong, a man of understanding increases strength.
But better than both the bodybuilder and the power lifter is the guy who has great
strength and goes to work and uses it and does something that's profitable unto his
fellow man.
You know, that uses his strength to do something to serve the Lord and to serve his boss and
to serve his family, et cetera.
But this is what I think of, you know, the spiritual, basically what we have today is
these intellectual bodybuilders.
Intellectual bodybuilding, spiritual bodybuilding, where you basically just, you know, want to
just show how much you know.
And you know what?
Listen, I know there are people who are into bodybuilding, but let me tell you something.
To people who are not into bodybuilding, it looks stupid.
We look at your Facebook posts where you're just sending a selfie over and over again
of you flexing in front of the mirror, all the selfies, and we're just like, why?
And especially these bodybuilding competitions where they're all tanned and oiled up and
out there flexing, we're looking at this like, what?
This is weird.
Like, who would go to this?
What are you doing?
Who agrees with me on this?
Can I get a witness that bodybuilding is a weird sport?
God bless you, I see that hand.
So the point is, you know, it looks even stupider, these intellectual bodybuilders that just
want to just constantly, you know, show us, you know, they're not showing a selfie of
them flexing in front of the mirror, but they're like flexing their brain in front of the mirror
and putting it on Facebook for us.
They're constantly, you get in a conversation with them and instead of ripping off their
shirt and like flexing for you, they do that verbally.
They do that mentally, you know.
And basically they become just this spiritual steroid-filled body, you know, I'm going to
puff you up, is what they would say, if we could hear them spiritually.
Why?
They're puffed up with nose.
And think about some of these bodybuilders look a little puffed up, right?
When their head is too small for their body, because they're just all puffed up, you know.
This is how some people, and honestly, you know, sometimes you see a guy who lifts and
you think, wow, that guy looks, you know, he looks like he's got a really good physique,
he looks really strong.
But here's the thing, a lot of times you look at some of these guys and it's kind of like,
whoa, that's, you went overboard and you look weird.
Sometimes you see pictures on the cover of these bodybuilding magazines, especially,
it's even weirder when women are into it, and you see these covers on the bodybuilding
magazine where it doesn't even look good anymore.
You know, just the veins are bulging, and the fake tan is oozing, and it's like, they're
just all puffed up.
But see, this is how some people get spiritually.
They're staring way too long into that spiritual mirror, right?
It's like they're just in front of a mirror at home, just like, yeah, yeah, I'm awesome,
yeah, yeah, I know the Greek and Hebrew, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, I know theology, huh?
Exegesis, eisegesis, I know systematic theology, woo, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then they start, you know, you wonder why you lose friends.
And this goes both for the bodybuilders and for the mental bodybuilders that we're talking
about.
Look, if I'm lying, I'm dying.
Everything I'm saying right now is true, and you know it, and I know it.
This is what the Bible is saying.
You know, I don't want to know the word of those that are puffed up.
I don't want to see them put a display of their knowledge verbally.
No, show me the power.
Not just this showing off.
Whether it's physical, whether it's spiritual, what's the point?
You're not even performing anything of any value.
Flip over, if you would, to 1 Corinthians chapter 14, 1 Corinthians chapter 14.
Mental bodybuilding is what we're preaching against this morning.
But flip over to 1 Corinthians 14, and here's another, here's another great scripture that
comes to mind when it comes to this, going back to the Greek and going back to the Hebrew
because I'm so intelligent.
Look, buddy, take your Hebrew to Israel and go get your butt kicked by some Orthodox Jew
who hates Jesus.
You know, we don't need that here.
This is America.
We speak English.
You know, or at least learn Spanish, right?
At least talk to people that speak Spanish because they actually live here.
What do you want to spend all this time learning Greek and Hebrew so you can live in Arizona,
which is not a Greek or a Hebrew speaking place, but oh, you're going to go down and
you're going to master the depths of God's word.
But here's the verse that comes to mind with this Greek and Hebrew, who so boasteth himself
of a false gift is like clouds and wind without rain.
It's Proverbs 25, 14, but you're turning to 1 Corinthians 14.
And I think of the term being a blowhard.
Have you ever heard somebody called a blowhard, right?
The blowhard, they're like clouds and winds but no rain.
There's no substance there.
It's all just a bunch of hot air.
It's all just a big puff, puffed up.
You know, and these people that are all puffed up, you could put a needle in them and just
watch them pop because there's nothing there of substance.
But oh, you know, they know the Greek, but here's the thing.
They're boasting of a false gift and that gift is known as the gift of tongues.
You know, the Bible talks about people who are gifted with tongues.
These are people who can actually speak a foreign language and you know what the purpose
of the gift of tongues always was in the book of Acts?
To win people to Christ.
Why was the gift of tongue given in Acts chapter 2?
Because in Acts chapter 2 there were people from other parts of the world who hadn't heard
the gospel and so basically the Lord miraculously enabled the apostles and the early church
members to be able to speak in foreign languages that they'd never learned.
And what was the purpose?
To get somebody saved.
To get about 3,000 people saved and baptized.
That was the purpose.
Was the purpose?
Just to show off.
But see people today, they want to speak in an unknown tongue to edify themself.
The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 14, he that speaketh in an unknown tongue edifieth himself.
Lifts himself up.
Look at 1 Corinthians 14, 9.
So likewise ye, except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood.
How shall it be known what is spoken?
For ye shall speak into the air.
See a person who legitimately wants to speak God's word and preach for the benefit of the
listener uses words that people understand.
A person who wants to puff themselves up uses words that they know the person that they're
talking to doesn't understand just in order to make themselves look smart.
And this has nothing to do with having a big vocabulary.
It's great to have a big vocabulary.
It's great to have knowledge.
But when you're just dropping words, especially when they're not even words that are in the
Bible, you're just dropping big words just to show off.
And you know that there are intellectual bodybuilders out there who do this.
You know it.
Just drop a big word and then just kind of sit back and watch the perplexed looks on
the people you're talking to.
What's your goal?
I mean the goal of language should be to communicate, not show how good you are, show how smart
you are.
The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 14, 18, I thank my God I speak with tongues more than
you all.
This is a guy who spoke multiple foreign languages.
This is a guy who was brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, very educated, and then he spent
his life traveling through countries learning all different languages.
He's a missionary that traveled around and he's speaking to people in their native tongue.
He learned all these great foreign languages.
But he says, yet in the church I'd rather speak five words with my understanding that
by my voice I might teach others also than 10,000 words in an unknown tongue.
He said rather speak in the tongue that the listener can understand and use words that
are easy to be understood.
But preachers all over America today are puffing themselves up by saying, well if you go back
to the Greek, the Greek word here is metanoia.
If you go back to the Hebrew, you'll actually see the Hebrew word here, you know, it's rakwa.
And they basically are just puffing themselves up.
That doesn't edify you.
Why would it edify you to sit there and tell you, hey, this is what it is in Greek and
here's what it really means.
And they're boasting of a false gift because I've never met one yet that was actually fluent
in the language.
And let me just put this stupidity to bed right now where somebody says, well it's impossible
to become fluent in Koine Greek because it's a dead language.
Well first of all, number one, you can become fluent in a dead language, number one.
You could read and write fluently in that language.
Fluently meaning you don't have to stop and translate it in your mind from English.
You just start writing in Greek.
Start writing in Koine Greek.
Well it's not a spoken language.
Okay here's a piece of paper, go ahead and write for me in Koine fluently.
That'll shut these fools up with their Greek and Hebrew garbage.
You say, are you mad about it?
I'm sick of it.
I'm sick of all this.
Well God hates arrogance and pride and boasting of a false gift.
So do I.
Excuse me.
And you know what?
Oh, it's a dead language.
No it's not.
There's 15 million people who speak it.
They're called Greek people.
They live in a country called Greece.
And they have a food festival here, the Greek food festival.
And let me tell you something, I have literally, because I preach about this a lot because
I hate this going back to the Greek, going back to Hebrew.
Why?
Because it destroys faith in what people have in front of them, their English Bible, the
King James Bible, and tells them, oh you need something else.
And who you really need is them to break it down to you.
But here's what's interesting about this.
In the course of preaching on this for years, and in the course of uploading videos about
the Greek language and talking about issues of the Greek New Testament and everything
over the last few years, I have received comments on my YouTube channel, emails sent to me,
even a letter in the mail.
I've received messages in one way or another from probably around 100 people who live in
this mythical place called Greece, this mysterious place over in Europe that you could hop on
a plane and fly there tomorrow if you want.
It's there.
It's real.
And there are 15 million people there.
And I've received probably about 100 messages from people who live in Greece.
And you know what they all said?
They all said, you're right, Pastor Anderson, about the fact that they can understand the
Bible in Koine Greek and that it is not a completely different language.
Because these liars in these seminaries and Bible colleges will try to tell you, oh, modern
Greek and Koine Greek are two completely different languages.
And the reason why they've come up with this lie is to hide the fact that they're not fluent,
to hide the fact that they know very little, to hide the fact that they are boasting of
a false gift.
So to hide that, they make up this fraud that, oh, these are two completely different languages.
No, they're not.
Now, is Koine Greek different than modern Greek?
Yeah, but let me ask you this.
Is the language of the King James Version different than the way we talk today?
Yeah.
The language of the King James is different than we talk today.
Well, would anybody get up and say, hey, this is a completely different language, totally.
I mean, do people in Australia speak a completely different language?
People in England speak a completely different language.
If you read Shakespeare, is it just a totally different language?
No, it's both dialects of the same language.
It's different variations and dialects on the same language.
In fact, I bought a box of flashcards of Koine Biblical Greek and I went through the first
hundred flashcards of the hundred most commonly used words in the Greek New Testament and
I looked them all up in a modern Greek dictionary and more than 95% of them were identical in
modern Greek as Koine Greek, but it's a completely different language.
But yet I've gotten emails, like I said, messages from about a hundred people living
in Greece who said, I go to a Greek Orthodox Church every Sunday and we read the Bible
in Koine Greek and we understand it just fine.
Now, sure, I'm sure you could find somebody who doesn't understand it, but you could find
somebody who doesn't understand this too, couldn't you?
We went out and looked for the most, you know, ignorant person that we could find.
You know, duh, duh, duh, what's thou mean?
You know, it's out there, right?
But the point is though, these are not two completely different languages.
So here's why they come up with this lie though.
They want Greek to be this mysterious language that only they understand.
They don't want there to be 15 million people who eat, breathe, and sleep this language
all day long because then people will realize what it is, a normal language.
And then they'll realize that the Bible says the same thing in the English Bible as it
says in the Greek Bible and that there's no point in going back to the Greek because it
says the same thing.
But this fraud is perpetrated by people who want to puff themselves up, period, okay?
If anyone really was serious about becoming fluent in Greek, they would have to move to
Greece and then they could study the differences between modern and biblical, but they could
actually learn the language though.
They could actually learn how to speak it and understand it.
But these people who say, we can't be fluent in it.
Okay, well here's the thing about the King James Bible translators.
Did you know that the King James Bible translators, when they had their meetings where they would
compare notes and work through the translation, did you know that they did not speak English
in those meetings, that they spoke Latin in those meetings fluently?
Did you know that?
The King James Bible translators, when they got together and had meetings, there are copious
notes of what this person said, what that person said, and it's all in Latin.
They're speaking Latin.
Now Latin had already been a dead language, hadn't it?
For well over a thousand years, but yet all these guys are showing up to a meeting and
speaking Latin fluently one another.
Oh, what about a guy named Samuel Adams, the father of the American Revolution, who when
he graduated from the sixth grade, in order to graduate from the sixth grade, had to stand
up and give a speech that he wrote in Latin, and he gave a speech and delivered it in Latin
about freedom and about issues of American independence and so forth.
But it's impossible to learn how to speak a dead language and get fluent.
Well, that's funny because Samuel Adams was fluent in Latin.
That's funny.
All the King James Bible translators were sitting around chit-chatting in Latin, but
people want to boast of a false gift.
There are plenty of professional translation agencies out there where people translate
and they get paid to do it, and in fact, my wife and I, we used to do this for a living
for a while between German and English where we translate.
I did this full-time for a while translating.
See, there are people who actually get paid to translate.
It's a major job that people do in this world, but then there are other people who don't
get paid to translate anything.
They just translate to go like this behind the pulpit, you know.
I mean, look, is that what you come to church for?
Did you come to church for me to flex my intellectual muscle for you this morning?
Shall I flex my spirit this morning?
Is that why you're here?
No.
I believe that everyone would agree that they're here today to learn something, to make them
a better person, to be edified, right?
Do you want me to get up here and edify myself, or do you come here so that I can edify you?
I'm here to teach you and help you and want you to grow and so forth, not just, oh, let
me show you how smart I am.
And look, this whole going back to the Greek, going back to the Hebrew is a fraud.
It's a gateway to unlimited false doctrine because no one can check you up on it because
nobody knows the language.
So then the pastor says stuff and everybody's just like, oh, okay.
They just have to take his word for it.
It is a gateway to unlimited false doctrine, which is why false prophets love it.
False prophets love it because people can't check it out.
That's why these false prophet scholar types, they hate the King James Bible only movement.
The King James Bible only movement says you have the word of God and you understand just
as much as I do.
If we have the same Bible, same Holy Spirit, we can all learn the same things.
That's why these pseudo-intellectuals who boast of a false gift hate it, hate that King
James only-ism.
Why?
Because it puts a little pinprick in their puffed up biceps spiritually.
It's just like, pfft.
The blowhards of this world hate it.
And I'm running out of time here.
All right.
I got to skip some points here.
I have to come back to this stuff.
Let's go to Colossians chapter 2, trying to figure out what to skip here, trying to prioritize
what to skip here.
What are we talking about this morning?
Being puffed up, being arrogant.
Listen, if you know a lot of Bible, show me your soul winning.
Show me serving God.
Show me being humble.
Show me doing something for other people.
Don't just come and talk all this big hot air about going down deep and staying down
long and coming up dry.
Hey, let's not be arrogant and proud.
Let's be humble.
You know what?
Let's be able to walk in to a bad neighborhood and talk to an uneducated person without making
them feel dumb and actually make them feel like they can understand the Gospel.
In fact, let's bring people into church that are one, two, three years old and then let's
bring people in that are mentally handicapped and let's bring in people that are speaking
English as a second language and let's bring in people that are not educated and then let's
preach the Bible to them in a way where they can understand it.
That sounds like a great thing to do with our lives, doesn't it?
But the Bible says, I had to skip a point.
Point number one was being puffed up with knowledge but not serving humbly.
Not interested in what you could do.
See, if a person wanted to serve humbly, if they wanted to learn a foreign language, that
foreign language in this area would probably be Spanish because then you could actually
use it to win people the Lord.
Let's say you're living in an area where there are people who speak French or Chinese or
Hindi or Japanese.
You'd learn what you could use to serve.
Not just learn what you could use to puff yourself up.
And the only real purpose for learning biblical Greek or biblical Hebrew or learning languages
like Latin would be to just shut these false prophets up and just show that they're wrong.
That's really the only purpose I can even think of where it would actually be used for
edifying.
But look at Colossians, who here believes that the King James Bible is the word of God
without error?
Amen.
That's what I believe too.
Colossians chapter 2 verse 8.
Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men
after the rudiments of the world and not after Christ for in him dwelleth all the fullness
of the Godhead bodily and ye are complete in him which is the head of all principality
and power in whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands in
putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ buried with
him in baptism wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of
God who hath raised him from the dead and you being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision
of your flesh hath he quickened together with him having forgiven you all trespasses blotting
out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us which was contrary to us and took
it out of the way, nailing it to his cross and having spoiled principalities and powers,
he made a show of them openly triumphing over them in it.
Let no man therefore judge you in mead or in drink or in respect of a holy day or of
the new moon or of the Sabbath days which are a shadow of things to come but the body
is of Christ.
Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels
intruding into those things which he had not seen.
You say, why did you read all that?
Vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind.
Now what is the Bible saying here when it talks about being vainly puffed up by his
fleshly mind?
Number one, we said puffed up by knowledge but not serving humbly.
That's what produces the arrogance and pride that we see in Christians.
But number two, puffed up by strange doctrines.
Puffed up by strange doctrines.
You say, what do you mean by that, puffed up by strange doctrines?
Here Paul is warning about strange doctrines and he talks about people going into these
doctrines and peddling these doctrines as being puffed up in their fleshly mind.
Now what strange doctrines are we talking about?
Well one of the things that's mentioned right there in proximity with being puffed up in
your fleshly mind is this thing of worshipping of angels, are you listening?
Worshipping of angels intruding into those things which you have not seen, okay?
So the Bible is talking about intruding into things that you've not seen, things that are
not revealed and especially in regard to angels.
Now think about this, there's a whole body of teaching and doctrine and work on this
subject of angels that goes outside the scope of what the Bible teaches, doesn't it?
And we get these strange doctrines, what am I talking about, the Nephilim.
Again speaking of foreign language doesn't make you any smarter or make what you're saying
any more convincing.
Nephilim is simply the Hebrew word for giants, so why don't we just call it the doctrine
of the giants because that doesn't sound as cool as the Nephilim, okay.
So we get into this Nephilim doctrine where they build this whole giant doctrine, this
elaborate thing about all these hybrid DNA splicing between humans and angels and the
corrupt DNA and Noah, it wasn't that Noah was found righteous or that Noah found grace
in the eyes of the Lord, no, no, no, it was just that Noah's DNA was pure.
He was not one of the hybrid beings.
And all this weird doctrine and it's vain jangling.
It doesn't get anybody saved, it has nothing to do with the Gospel of Jesus and people
don't want to talk about Jesus or the Gospel, it's just let's talk about the Nephilim.
None of the Bible never mentions because if you actually study Genesis 6, God makes
it clear why he destroyed the world because it's filled with violence.
He didn't say I destroyed it because the DNA was messed up.
He said I destroyed it because they've corrupted themselves.
He said the earth is filled with violence and then it says in that scripture that there
were giants in the land in those days also.
Well you know what, there were also giants after the flood and the Bible tells us how
tall those giants were.
One of them, Goliath, was nine feet some odd inches tall.
Another Og, the king of Bashan, was around 11, 10, 11 feet tall maximum.
If you study the size of his bed was 13 and a half feet and I'm sure he didn't just have
the headboard here and his foot here so I'm sure that when Og, king of Bashan, woke up
in the morning he went like this in bed.
So therefore he was only about 10 feet tall.
Why does God tell us how tall Goliath was?
Why does God tell us how tall Og, king of Bashan, was?
Because he wants us to know how tall they were.
And you know what, these Nephilim people though, they say giants were 30 feet tall, 40 feet
tall, like Jack and the Beanstalk giant, like Gulliver's travel giant.
I've even heard them say 450 feet tall.
What was that calculation you did, son, about the giant that's 450 feet tall?
How big is his eyeball?
Yeah, a three foot diameter eyeball on this giant, okay, supposedly.
And supposedly normal women are giving birth to these babies in Genesis 6, right?
These angels are coming in under the daughters of men and producing these 450 foot tall beings.
Right.
In reality, sons of God means what sons of God always means, every time it's mentioned
in the Bible, someone who's saved, always, every time.
Son of God, saved, okay?
The sons of men can be either saved or unsaved, right?
Because we're all sons of men.
But the sons of God versus the sons of men, daughters of men, is talking about the saved
versus the unsaved.
The godly versus the ungodly, that's what it's talking about.
There's none of this ancient aliens.
And whenever anybody starts going into these real deep teachings on angels, real deep teaching
on the Incubus and the Succubus and the demons and learning all their names and terminologies
and all these doctrines of different angels, you know what?
They're vainly puffed up by their fleshly mind because they think it's cool to learn
about this.
This is like people who learn the Star Trek language Klingon.
Because it's just like, ooh, it's cool.
No it's not cool at all.
But they get into all this sci-fi thing about the Nephilim.
And look, not serving humbly, but just getting vainly puffed up in their fleshly mind.
He also brings up people who are trying to bring us back under the Sabbath, bring us
under the Jewish holidays, that these people are also in this category of people who are
just vainly puffed up in their fleshly mind.
Why?
Because these doctrines are not profitable unto men.
What does it profit?
No what they are is the vain janglings of people who desire to be teachers of the law
understanding neither what they say nor whereof they affirm.
Why?
Because we understand through faith and we understand through doing the deeds and doing
the work, not being puffed up.
And I have a lot more in my notes, but I don't have time for it.
So let me just close it out by saying this.
We need to make sure that when we go through our lives, we don't talk down to people.
We don't go around trying to show people how smart we are.
We don't go around trying to show people how rich we are because there are people who do
that too, right?
Oh, by the way, did I tell you how much my car costs?
Did I tell you how much my wife's purse costs?
Did I tell you how much that ring costs?
Hey, did I tell you about my summer home and my winter home and my RV and my boat and my
motorcycle?
You know, don't go around showing people how rich you are.
Don't go around showing people how smart you think you are.
Don't go around flexing your muscles for a selfie and uploading it to Facebook every
day.
Don't join a bodybuilding competition, okay?
Don't just puff yourself up mentally, spiritually.
Look, be a humble person.
What does it mean to be humble?
It means that you don't just think the world revolves around you, but that rather your
goal is how can I help somebody?
How can I win someone to Christ?
How can I reach people that nobody cares about?
How can I reach my hand down to people that are poor and help lift them up?
How can I reach my hand down to those that are ignorant and help make them smarter?
But see, the puffed up person wants to keep people dumb because they want to be the smart
one.
They want to be a big fish in a little pond.
No, we want to help other people.
We want to bring people's knowledge up.
We want to help other people get stronger, get smarter, get wiser, you know, be able
to pay their bills and help give them a hand up, not a hand out.
Why?
Because we love people.
And if you have charity in your heart, you don't even need this sermon.
Because charity is when you care about other people and your life is about reaching other
people, helping other people, not about self-aggrandizement.
And listen, if you wonder why you don't have a lot of friends maybe, this really turns
away friends when you're really arrogant.
People don't like it.
People don't like to be around somebody who brags all the time, shows off all the time.
They like to be around somebody who can condescend to men of lower state and be humble.
And you know what?
If you can't walk into a poor neighborhood with a Bible and give the gospel to poor people,
you need to get right with God.
If you can't fit in, I just don't fit in here.
What's wrong with you?
They're human, you're human.
You should be able to fit in and win souls or you're too puffed up.
We need to get off our high horse, my friend, and think about other people, how we can help
them, not how we can just bless ourself.
Alright, let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much, Lord, for your word, Lord, and thank you for the fact that
we all have it and that we can all read it and understand it and that we have no need
that any man teach us.
We have the Holy Spirit, we have the word of God, we don't need some self-styled Greek
scholar who's not fluent in the written or spoken language, Lord.
We don't need the puffed up theologians and Calvinists and scholars of this world, Lord,
to break it down to us.
Lord, thank you for giving us the Bible and giving us the power of the Holy Spirit, Lord.
Help us to focus on having power in our lives as a result of the knowledge that we've learned,
not to show off the knowledge that we've learned.
And help us just be humble people in general and not to be haughty and arrogant, even just
in our everyday interactions with people.
Help people to look at us and see us as humble people and help us never to be braggarts and
boasters.
And in Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Alright, we broke the attendance record.
How many people do we have this morning?
180?
Alright, our old record was 174, we've got 180 people here this morning, so that means
we've got ice cream after the service.
Every time we break our record we have ice cream, so stick around for ice cream.