BOASTING IN THE LORD
Holy Ground Spirit Filled Church
Pastor: Joe M. Garza
3-19-06
Text: 1 Corinthians 1:31
1 Corinthians 1:31 (AMP)
So then, as it is written, Let him who boasts and proudly rejoices and glories, boast and proudly rejoice and glory in the Lord
Jeremiah 9:24 (NIV)
But let him who boasts, boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight
INTRODUCTION:
I hope you will agree with me this morning that in order to love deeply there are things you must deeply hate. You could think of examples yourself. To love children deeply you must hate any mistreatment or neglect that destroys them. If you love clear-headed and respect, you have to hate alcoholism and drug addiction. If you love freedom you have to hate slavery and totalitarianism (it’s a government with one political group maintains complete control; dictatorship)
The reason we start with this observation is because we are about to tell you something God hates, and we know that the word hate by itself has a negative and unattractive ring to it. But we want you to realize from the very outset that God’s hatred is the reflex of his love.
a. The only reason anybody should hate anything is because it replaces or ruins something beautiful and wonderful
*Hatred should always stand in the service of love
----if you hate anything, it should be because you love something more
*So when I tell you that God hates something, we want you to hear that hatred as the echo of his love.
----He hates what He hates because it replaces or ruins something beautiful
A. The thing our Lord hates more than anything else in this world is human pride
Proverbs 6:16-17 (AMP)
These six things the Lord hates, indeed, seven are an abomination to Him: [17] A proud look (the spirit that makes one overestimate himself and underestimate others), a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood.
*God sees the pride in the heart and hates it there
*When it prevails to that degree that the show of men’s facial expressions witnesses against them that they overvalue themselves and undervalue all about them, this is in a special manner hateful to our Lord
----in other words, pride is proud of itself and sets shame with boldness and resists authority
Psalm 101:5 (AMP)
Whoso privily slanders his neighbor, him will I cut off from me; he who has a haughty look and a proud and arrogant heart I cannot and I will not tolerate
*People take pleasure in wounding their neighbor’s reputation secretly
----WATCH ME! If you raise or spread false stories, to the prejudice of your neighbors good name, the word of God says, “him will I cut off from my family and court”
a. Their are haughty, conceited, ambitious people
*None do more mischief in a family, in a court, in a CHURCH, for only by pride comes contention
----people with a haughty look and a proud and arrogant heart do not aim at doing good
----WATCH ME FREAK YOU OUT! They only aim at getting more power or be more greater for themselves and their families
----GOD RESISTS THE PROUD
Proverbs 16:5 (AMP)
Everyone proud and arrogant in heart is disgusting, hateful, and exceedingly offensive to the Lord: be assured I pledge it they will not go unpunished (Proverbs 8:13; 11:20-21)
Isaiah 2:11 (NIV)
The eyes of the arrogant man will be humbled and the pride of men brought low; the Lord alone will be exalted in that day
Jeremiah 50:31 (KJV)
Behold, I am against thee, O thou most proud, saith the Lord God of hosts: for thy day is come, the time that I will visit thee
*Jesus said in Luke 16:15, “What is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.”
*In Acts 12:23 it says that an angel of the Lord struck Herod so that he was eaten with worms and died because when he received applause from the people he did not give God the glory but took it for himself
----God hates human pride
b. This is the root problem in the church at Corinth
[We are going to take a quick survey of the letters to Corinth to see if this is so, and also to see just what pride is. Ask these two questions as we go……]
1. Is pride the root problem at Corinth?
2. What actually is pride?
1 Corinthians 1:29 (AMP)
So that no mortal man should (have pretense for glorying and) boast in the presence of God
1 Corinthians 1:31 (AMP)
So that, just as it is written, “Let Him Who Boasts, Boast In The Lord”
1 Corinthians 3:7 (AMP)
So neither he who plants is anything nor he who waters, but (only) God Who makes it grow and become greater
1 Corinthians 3:21 (AMP)
So let no one exult proudly concerning men (boasting of having this or that man as a leader), for all things are yours,
1 Corinthians 4:6 (at the end) “that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against.” (the end of verse 7) “If then you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift”
1 Corinthians 4:18 (AMP)
Some of you have become conceited and arrogant and pretentious, counting on my not coming to you
1 Corinthians 5:2 (AMP)
And you are proud and arrogant
1 Corinthians 8:1(AMP)
Now about food offered to idols: of course we know that all of us possess knowledge concerning these matters. Yet mere knowledge causes people to be puffed up (to bear themselves loftily and be proud), but love (affection and goodwill and benevolence) edifies and builds up and encourages one to grow to his full stature
1 Corinthians 13:4
Love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude
2 Corinthians 1:9 (AMP)
Indeed, we felt within ourselves that we had received the very sentence of death, but that was to keep us from trusting in and depending on ourselves instead of on God Who raises the dead.
2 Corinthians 3:5 (AMP)
Not that we are fit (qualified and sufficient in ability) of ourselves to form personal judgments or to claim or count anything as coming from us, but our power and ability and sufficiency are from God
2 Corinthians 4:7
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us
2 Corinthians 12:9 (NIV)
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me
*It is not hard to see that the root problem in the church at Corinth is pride
*It is not hard to see either what that pride is?
----it is boasting in self and not the Lord
----it is taking credit ourselves for what God alone can do
----it is relying on self and not God
----it is feeling sufficiency in our own strength and not in God’s
----it is the disinclination to admit that we are mere earthly vessels so that another gets the glory
----it is the unwillingness to admit weaknesses that may accent the Power of Christ
1. What is the beautiful thing that is replaced or ruined by pride?
2. What does God love so much that he must hate pride with all his might?
----He loves the heart that boasts in the Lord
----He loves the heart that gives him credit for what he alone can do
----He loves the heart that relies on his power
----He loves the heart that wants him to get the glory in all things
----He loves the heart that wants the Power of his Son to shine in our weakness
*John Piper said, “if you have caught on to the essence of Christian Hedonism you will know that when God delights in this, he delights in the deepest, most satisfying human experience possible
*WHY??????
----we were made to boast in God
----we were made to give him credit for all good
----we were made to rely on his power
----we were made to magnify his glory and his all sufficiency in our weakness
c. This is the source of all ultimate joy and satisfaction
*If God were to delight in anything less than our boasting in him, he would be an idolater and he would be a killjoy
*WATCH ME! Pride perts our capacity for exultation from the galaxies of God’s glory to the gutters of our puny achievements
----basically, pride is a dead end street
----God hates pride and we should hate in ourselves what God hates in us and to handle and exercise the power of the sword of the Spirit as best we can to slay this dragon in our souls
[This morning we want to take you through Paul’s thought process in 1 Corinthians 1:18-31. It comes to a climax in verse 31 with the words, “let him who boasts boast in the Lord.” ]
*What we are really asking is this………….
1. How does Paul guide a person from being proud and self-reliant into being a person who exults in God and not self?
2. May that happen for all of us this morning as we follow the Word of God
d. There are at least five steps in Paul’s thought in these verses
I. THE FIRST STEP IS THE BASIC FACT OF EXPERIENCE THAT HUMANS WANT SOMETHING TO BOAST IN, BUT NOT GOD
1 Corinthians 1:22 (KJV)
For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom
*WATCH ME cause I’m going to Freak You Out!
*“Signs” are the display of power and “wisdom” is the display of intelligence
*Some people get their strokes through power and others get their strokes through intelligence
----it might be your own Power or Intelligence
----it might belong to someone you can associate with (as was the case here in Corinth)
----it might be a Super Bowl team in your home town that you boast about
----it might be your high school football team
----it might be your company you work for
----it might be even a religion
----a church, etc
*Pride can boast in itself directly or it can boast in itself indirectly by association
----so two absolutely incompetent (without ability; knowledge) ballplayers may brag about the ball team in their city as though they had anything to do with making the team good
e. God created man with a deep desire to boast in something great, but sin came into the world and made everyone of us hate to boast in God
*We seek for displays of power and displays of intelligence and we make these our gods
----it might be the power of a airplane
----it might be the power of the space shuttle
----it might be the power of an 18-wheeler
----it might be the power of the strongest man in the world or if you are a women the power of a shapely figure
----it can be a A-average in school or an advanced degree
*The Greeks craved eloquent displays of intelligence and the Jews wanted amazing displays of power
*One man says, “Show me something great with your mind,” and another says, “Show me something great with your body”
----but no one ever says apart from the Spirit 1 Cor 12:3 show me God because Sin has blinded us
II. THE SECOND STEP IN PAUL’S THOUGHT IS TO AFFIRM WHAT EVERYONE DENIES THE SUPERIORITY OF GOD OVER ALL POWER AND WISDOM OF THE WORLD
1 Corinthians 1:25 (KJV)
Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men
----WATCH ME! It is a great tragedy when your quest for power and wisdom stops short of God
----God is a treasure of Power and a treasure of Wisdom infinitely greater than any of the things that excite you in this world
a. Paul wants to stamp this truth on us so deeply that he risks some dangerous language about God
*Paul says that when God is as foolish as he can be he is still smarter than all the Wisdom of men and when God is as weak as he can be, he is still stronger than all the Power that man can unleash
----God can hold a child on his lap and also the inner part of that child’s flesh in existence by the power of his thought
----WATCH ME cause I’m going to Freak You Out!
----when Our Lord stooped to let himself be mocked , beaten and crucified and stabbed, he destroyed the power of Satan over his people
----Jesus covered the sins of millions of sinners, and he vindicated the Glory of His Name
[How foolish for us to seek wisdom and power in the world and not in Jesus when the weakness of God is stronger than any POWER in the world and the foolishness of God is wiser than any WISDOM in the world………….]
III. SO THE THIRD STEP IN PAUL’S THOUGHT IS TO DESCRIBE HOW GOD DEALS WITH MAN’S LOVE FOR HUMAN INTELLIGENCE AND POWER
1 Corinthians 1:19 (NIV)
For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”
1 Corinthians 1:21 (AMP)
For when the world with all its earthly wisdom failed to perceive and recognize and know God by means of its own philosophy, God in His wisdom was pleased through the foolishness of preaching (salvation, procured by Christ and to be had through Him), to save those who believed (who clung to and trusted in and relied on Him)
----in other words, in his wisdom God decided to blockade all the roads that men are building to heaven by their own Power and Intelligence, and to put in their place one narrow gate and one hard road, namely, the Calvary road and the gate of the cross
A. There Are Two Ways That God Destroys The Wisdom Of The Wise And Frustrates The Cleverness Of The Clever
1. He blockades their self-reliant quest for God
2. He preaches Christ crucified as the only way to God
----this destroys the wisdom of the wise and frustrates the cleverness of the clever because it is so humiliating to cast yourself on the accomplishments of a bloody redeemer
1 Corinthians 1:30 (AMP)
But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption
*You can easily see why the cross is the end of the line for human pride
*Can you picture a well respected American businessman, a banker, lawyer, doctor, well dressed, well groomed being taken out the gate of the city to the garbage dump and being stood in front of a post with a naked man hanging by the nails driven through his wrists, covered with blood, gasping for His last breaths, and being told, “This, sir, is wisdom and righteousness and holiness and redemption. Will you kneel down here and cast yourself on him for mercy?”
a. God has chosen a way of salvation that devastates human pride
*“That!!!! You want me to bow down before that! You think I need that! Don’t you see how I am dressed! Have you seen the car I drive! Don’t you know where I work! Don’t you know how much money I make! Do you think I need that heap of bloody flesh! What do you think I am a dog? A worm?”
* “We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles,” (verse 23).
* “The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing,” (verse 18)
----in His wisdom God cuts off the way of pride and frustrates man’s reliance on human power and human wisdom
----God opens a way to glory and to God that proud man cannot stand, namely, they way of the cross
*WHY?
1. Is it because he hates man?
----no it is because He HATES PRIDE
b. When God blockades the road of pride, he blockades the road to destruction
----when He routes you onto the Calvary Road of brokenness and humility and faith, He routes you to glory and to God
----in the presence of God is fullness of joy and at his right hand are pleasures for evermore (Psalm 16:11)
IV. THERFORE THE FOURTH STEP IN PAUL’S THOUGHT HERE IS A KIND OF WARNING: THERE ARE NOT MANY POWERFUL OR SHREWD (clever) PEOPLE WHO RESPOND TO THE SAVING WORD OF THE CROSS
1 Corinthians 1:20 (NIV)
Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
Read (Verse 26-28)
*God blockaded the pathways of pride and opened the way of the cross, but he is also opening the hearts of many foolish and weak and low and despised people along with a few upper-class people
----in other words, So God can put to shame those who boast in power and wisdom and class and achievement
V. IT IS STATED NEGATIVELY IN VERSE 29 AND POSITIVELY IN VERSE 31
1 Corinthians 1:29 (NIV)
So that no one may boast before Him
1 Corinthians 1:31(NIV)
So that, just as it is written, “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord”
*The purpose of God in the creation of man and the salvation of sinners is that we might boast in HIM
CONCLUSION:
This is God’s will for you this morning
----God is speaking in these words very clearly
----God is saying turn this very moment from all boasting in yourself
----don’t seek your pleasure anymore in your own wisdom or your own strength or your own looks or your own achievements
----look to Christ crucified and see what becomes of it all
*Paul said in Galatians 6:14, “ Far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”
[So I call you to come to Christ and die this morning and to live. And the promise of God is this: There is no greater life, no greater joy than to boast in Him
