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. 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. 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 arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth do I hate." God is saying here that he hates pride. He hates arrogancy 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. Okay, so arrogancy, pride, being puffed up, it's when people think more highly of themselves than they ought to speak. The Bible says in Proverbs 16:18, "Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. Better it is to be of a humble spirit with the lowly than to divide the spoil with the proud."
Go over to chapter 18. 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." Flip over to Isaiah chapter 2, just a few pages to the right in your Bible, Isaiah chapter 2. The Bible teaches us that pride, arrogancy, 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 man 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 shall be made low, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day." 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. Then God has to bring you down to where you belong.
Okay, the Bible says in chapter 3, verse 16, just flip over to your right in your Bible, Moreover the Lord saith because the daughters of Zion are haughty," and notice how 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 neck? They've got their chin way up in the air and they're walking with stretched forth necks. They think that they're so cool is what it says.
"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 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 mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins,"
The crisping pin is the curling iron, by the way. It says, "The glasses and," 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. They men shall fall by the sword and thy mighty in the war and her gate 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 your 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 you want. 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. There are some things we can do to modify other parts of our bodies but I'm saying 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? 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. 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. I think everybody can relate to what I just showed you. The woman who's walking with a stretched neck and she's all just decked out with ornaments. 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. 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 to you from Jeremiah, "We've heard the pride of Moab. He is exceeding proud, his loftiness, and his arrogancy, and his pride, and the haughtiness of his heart." Chapter 10 and verse 33 in Isaiah, "Behold the Lord of hosts shall lop the bough 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 said 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. Sometimes he brings people down pretty hard, if you read these scriptures.
Where did I have you turn, 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 arrogancy 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 2, couple of books here, just Proverbs and Isaiah, over and over. Look at verse 6, "We've heard the pride of Moab. He's very pride even of his haughtiness and his pride and his wrath but his lies shall not be so." Again, there are 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. Whosever exalteth himself," the Bible says, "Shall be abased but whoso humbles themselves shall be exalted." There are so many scriptures that teach this.
Let's go to the New Testament now, 1 Corinthians 4, where we started, 1 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." 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 man."
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 accordingly as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith." You know and I know we all have come in 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. Okay, 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 these a lot in both 1st and 2nd 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 had begotten them through Christ Jesus. The Bible says in verse 15, "For though ye have 10,000 instructors in Christ, yet have ye 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 has 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. 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? Shall I come unto ye with the rod or in love and in the spirit of meekness."
What he's saying here is that the kingdom of God is not in word but in power. A lot of these people that are puffed up, what the Bible is 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 can 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. 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. 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. 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." The Bible 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 it? 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 fact, in Spanish you say charity, you say caridad. It's like caring. It's love for other people.
Look at chapter 13, which is the charity chapter, 1 Corinthians 13:1, "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 bodies 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 4, "Charity suffereth long and is kind. Charity envieth not. Charity vaunteth not its self," you see that? "Charity is not puffed up." What is the Bible saying here? Charity doesn't call attention to itself and say, "Hey everybody look at me. Look how great I am." Vaunting its self and puffing its self up. 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. 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 plaques about all of our knowledge. 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 that 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 beholdeth himself and goeth his way and straight way forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh in the perfect law of liberty and continueth 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, this is 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 endued 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, it says, "Who is a wise man and endued 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 the 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, where it's just 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." 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 protoevangelium and instead of just talking to about the story of the woman taken in adultery they'll talk to you about the pericope of adulterae. 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.
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. You know what the power of God into salvation is, the gospel of Jesus Christ and by the way, I'm thinking about 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? Jesus said, "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because he's anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor." That was the evidence. You know, when the Spirit of the Lord came upon the early church in Acts chapter 4, "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. I'm all for an electrician who knows a lot about the science, and 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 3:8, all right, let's go to Micah 3:8 for some reason. No it's not in the sermon. Micah 3:8, "But truly," okay here we go, Micah 3:8, 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." 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, do down deep, stay down long, come up dry, theology scholarship. 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 here's what I always think of whenever I read this scripture in 1 Corinthians 4 where he says, "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 2 types of sports associated with weightlifting, okay. There is body building and then there's power lifting, right? Who know what I'm talking about? Put up your hand if you're very familiar with these sports. There's body building and then there's power lifting. Now, here's what body building is, body building-
Am I losing a cuff link here? No, never mind, oh yeah I am losing a cuff link.
Body building is this sport, and I use the term sport very loosely, where basically people just compete in how they can make their bodies look. There's no performance involved, it's just how they look. Then for the body building competition, they basically get all oiled up, and tanned up, and go out in a Speedo, and just kind of, 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 and just flexing. Look it's total pride, it's total arrogancy, it's total self-glorification.
Now, then there's another sport, power lifting, where it's like 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. The Bible says a wise man is strong, a man of understanding increases strength but better than both, the body builder 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. He uses his strength to do something to serve the Lord and to serve his boss, and to serve his family, et cetera.
This is what I think of, the spiritual, basically what we have today is these intellectual body builders, intellectual body building, spiritual body building where you basically just want to show just how much you know. You know what, listen, I know there are people who are into body building, but let me tell you something, to people who are not into body building 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 body building 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 body building is a weird sport? God bless you, I see that hand.
The point is, it looks even stupider, these intellectual body builders that just want to just constantly show us, 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 flexing for you, they do that verbally. They do that mentally. Basically they become just this spiritual, steroid-filled body. "I'm going to puff you up," is what they would say if we could hear them spiritually. Why? They're puffed up enough. Think about, some of these body builders look a little puffed up, right, and 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, he looks like he's got a really good physique. He looks really strong."
Here's the thing, a lot of times you look at some of these guys and it's kind of like, "Whoa, you went overboard and you look weird." Sometimes you see pictures on the covers of these body building magazines, especially, and it's even weirder when women are into it, and you see these covers on the body building magazine where it doesn't even look good anymore. Just the veins are bulging and arrrrrrrhhh, and the fake tan is oozing, and it's like ugh, and it's like they're all puffed up. 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!"
Here's the thing, you wonder why you lose friends. This goes both for the body builders and for the mental body builders 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. I don't want to know that 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 body building is what we're preaching against this morning. Flip over to 1 Corinthians 14. 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 our butt kicked by some Orthodox Jew who hates Jesus. We don't need that here. This is America, we speak English. 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 Hebrew speaking place but oh, you're going to go down and you're going to master the depths of God's word.
Here's the verse that comes to mind with this Greek and Hebrew, "Whoso boasteth himself of a false gift is like clouds in wind without rain." It's Proverbs 25:14 but you're turning to 1 Corinthians 14. I think of the term, being a blowhard. Have you ever heard somebody called a blowhard, right? The blow hard, 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. These people that are all puffed up, you could put a needled in them and just watch them pop because there's nothing there of substance but oh, they know the great, but here's the thing, they're boasting of a false gift and that gift is known as the gift of tongues.
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 tongues 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. 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? See, people today they want to speak in an unknown tongue, to edify themselves. 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 know 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 they're talking to doesn't understand just in order to make themselves look smart. 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. You know that there are intellectual body builders 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? The goal of language should be to communicate, not show how good you are; show how smart you are.
Look what the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 14:18, "I thank my God I speak with tongues more than you all." This was 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 was 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 ten thousand words in an unknown tongue." He said, "I'd 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." Ooooh! "If you go back to the Hebrew you'll actually see the Hebrew word here is [rockwa 00:35:28]," 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. 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 can 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 Gree, start writing in Koine Greek. He's going, "Well, it's not a spoken language." Okay, here's a piece of paper, well go 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 arrogancy, and pride, and boasting of a false gift. So do I. Excuse me. You know what? Oh, it's a dead language. No it's not. There are fifteen 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. 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 the 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.
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, okay, I have received messages in one way or another from probably around a hundred people, okay, 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 fifteen million people there and I have received probably about a hundred 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 seminary and Bible colleges will try to tell you, "Oh Modern Greek and Koine Greek are two completely different languages."
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. To hide that they make up this fraud that, "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 but 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? Do 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 of the same language.
In fact, I bought a box of flash cards of Koine Biblical Greek and I went through the first hundred flash cards 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. Yet, I've gotten emails, like I said, messages from about a hundred people living in Greece who said, "I got 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? If we went out and looked for the most ignorant person that we could find, you know, duh, doo, doo, "What's thou mean?" It's out there, right, but the point is, though, these are not two completely different languages.
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 fifteen million people who eat, breathe, and sleep this language all day long because then people will realize what it is, a normal language. 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. 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. 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.
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 were 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 to 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. 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." That's funny because Samuel Adams was fluent in Latin. That's funny, all of 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.
In fact, my wife and I, we used to do this for a living for a while between German and English where we'd translate. I did this full time for a while, translating. See, there are people that 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? 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.
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 doctrines, which is why false prophets love it. False prophets love it because people can't check it out. That's why these false prophets, 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 Onlyism. Why, because it puts a little pin prick in their puffed up biceps spiritually. It's just phhhhhh! The blowhards of this world hate it. Man, I'm running out of time here.
All right, I've got to skip some points here. I'll have to come back to this stuff. Let's go to Colossians Chapter 2. I'm 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 into 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? 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 can 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, right, because then you could actually use it to win people to the Lord, right? Or let's say you're living in an area where there are people who speak French, or Chinese, or Hindi, or Japanese, you know you'd learn what you could use to serve, not just learn what you could use to puff yourself up, right? 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.
Look at Colossians. Who here believes that the King James Bible is the word of God without error? Yeah, 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 traditions of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the God head 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 and putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ. Buried with him in baptism, wherein are you also risen with him through the faith of the operation of God who has 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 meat, 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 a worshiping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen." You say, "Why'd 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 arrogancy and pride that we see in Christians. 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 minds. 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 worshiping of angels, are you listening, "Worshiping of angels, intruding into those things which ye have not seen," okay? The Bible is talking about intruding into things that you have 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? We get these strange doctrines. What am I talking about, the nephilim. Again, speaking a 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, you know, 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.
If people don't want to talk about Jesus or the gospel, it's just let's talk about the nephalim, something the Bible never mentions because if you actually study Genesis 6, God makes it clear why he destroyed the world, because it was 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 eleven, ten, eleven feet tall maximum. If you study the sizes, his bed was thirteen and a half feet and I'm just he didn't just have the headboard here and is foot here. 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 ten 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.
You know what? These nephilim people though, they say giants were thirty feet tall, forty feet tall, like Jack in the Beanstalk giants, like Gulliver's Travel giants. I've even heard them say four hundred and fifty feet tall, four hundred and fifty feet. What was that calculation you did, son, about the giant that's four hundred feet tall? How big is his eyeball? Yeah, three foot diameter eyeball on this giant, okay, supposedly. Supposedly, supposedly normal women are giving birth to these babies in Genesis 6, right? These angels are coming in unto the daughters of men and producing these four hundred fifty foot tall beings, right!
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, it's 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 this real deep teachings on angels, real deep teachings 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, you know, because it's just like, "Ooh, it's cool." No, it's not cool at all but they get into all this like 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. They're not profitable. 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.
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, look, by the way did I tell you how much my car cost? Did I tell you how much my wife's purse cost? Did I tell you how much that ring cost? Hey did I tell you about my summer home, and my winter home, and my RV, and my boat, and my motorcycle, and my," 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 body building 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? 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. 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. 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 them in a lower state and be humble.
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're too- If you can't fit in, "Oh, I just don't fit in here," well 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 our self. All right, 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 braggers and boasters, and in Jesus name we pray, amen.
All right, we broke the attendance record. How many people do we have this morning, a hundred and eighty? All right, our old record was one seventy four. We've got a hundred and eighty 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.
