[Gary Petty] Well, for the last two months, we've been exploring what the Apostle Paul calls a better way. We've been breaking down what he taught in 1 Corinthians 13, where he talks about this better way than just gifts. The Corinthian church had lots of gifts, but he said, "There's something better than that." And he uses this word agape, which is translated love, and he gives it a Christian meaning. The Apostle John does the same thing. And which they do, they use this word to describe the basic essential nature of God. This is who He is.

And then what Paul does in 1 Corinthians 13 says, "Let's look at these qualities, and this is what we are to become." This is part of conversion. We have knowledge, but once we get this knowledge, it actually changes who we are at the core as a person. And as we've gone through this, we've seen that agape involves a way of thinking. And it involves our motives. Agape involves self-sacrifice. You can't have it unless you sacrifice for others. Agape isn't contingent upon how other people treat you. And as we've gone through these things, we see that God is this way. Aren't you glad that God sacrifices for us? You know, Jesus suffered for us. He didn't have to do that. Aren't you glad He doesn't treat us the way we treat Him?

We saw that agape is unselfish and its outgoing concern is for everyone, not just close friends, not just family. And that's what was so interesting about Greek in which there are very specific words for the love of family or the love of friends. This word means this love is to be shared with everyone. And agape isn't always necessarily an emotion, although emotion is involved. But many times when we act out agape, the initial response is not, you know, happy and joy because we're doing something that's difficult to do. Many times the positive emotions happen later as we do these things or after we do these things because we're doing them for other people. Sometimes it's inconvenient, but we do it anyways.

So today we're going to look at two more qualities. We'll be going through that list in 1 Corinthians 13. And I say two because they're so combined together that it's actually easier to cover it in one sermon, although it would take four sermons to cover everything that this means. But at least we can get an overview in one sermon.

What Paul says next on his list of things about agape is he says, "It does not parade itself." It doesn't parade itself. The NIV says, "It does not boast." Now, boasting doesn't mean, "Oh, let me tell you about my fishing trip where we caught fish this big." And they may have been this big, but everybody else said, "Boy, I wish we caught fish that big. I bet they really weren't that big." I mean, that's not boasting. Boasting is... I mean, we tell stories about ourselves. We tell stories about experiences. We share stories with each other. We shared something I did. You know what I did in my life one time? And somebody will share that. You know, something good that happened to you or something you accomplished. That's not necessarily boasting. That's just sharing life and good things.

And so that's not boasting in what he's talking about, parading itself. In other words, you're promoting yourself. You're actually showing yourself off. This isn't showing the pictures of your grandkids. My wife's always afraid that, Gary, am I going to become like just these old grandmas that show off pictures of your grandkids? So she's afraid to show her pictures of her grandkids because she's afraid of, you know, everybody's going to think I'm just an old grandma. I said, "You are an old grandma, show them. Show them to everybody. What are they going to do? Say, 'Oh, you old grandma, get out of my face?' I mean, no one's going to say anything to you. Just show them off."

I got to pass this on my grandson a while back. I walked up to him and I said, "I am your grandfather." Now some of you know what that means. Since Mr. Moss gave a reference to the "Star Wars" I thought that's what made me think of this. And he looked at me and goes, "I am your grandson." It didn't have the desired effect I wanted at all.

Here's what real boasting is. Boasting is when we center our conduct and conversation to parade, to promote ourselves so that we are always the center of attention. Other people can't share their stories. You're not really communicating. You're just telling everybody, "Look at me. I am the center of attention. I am the center of what we need to talk about because I'm that important." And it is based on a very deep emotional need. In some ways, boasting all the time is a sense of insecurity or a sense of superiority. Now, you don't have anything worth saying, only I do. So we have to be careful about this, the concept of boasting.

Now, boasting is like the flea that's riding an elephant, looking at the elephant and say, "Boy did we shake that bridge when we crossed it." You know, I really didn't do anything, but I'm taking all the credit. You know, there's actually a story in the New Testament about boasting. Now it's an exaggerated story, admittingly, here. It's exaggerated story, but it makes a point about boasting, and that's something that God reacted to.

Let's go to Acts 12. Acts 12. This is about Herod Agrippa I. There's a lot of Herods in the New Testament. Herod the Great was established by the Romans, and he was over a big chunk of that central Middle East there. And then when he died, it got split up between different members of his household. And the Herods, the family weren't Israelites, they weren't Jews. They were Edomites, descendants of Esau. And they were very sensitive about that. I'm not so much Herod the Great was, but that some of the others were. And they tried so much to be accepted into the Jewish community, especially... When you were over Judea, you wanted to be seen as a fellow descendant of Abraham. So he tried real hard, some of them, to appear and be liked by the Jews that they ruled over. So we have a situation here. This happened with Herod Agrippa.

Acts 12:20 Says, "Now Herod had been very angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon; but they came to him with one accord, and having made Blastus the king's personal aide their friend, they asked for peace, because their country was supplied with food by the king's country."

Tyre and Sidon were two city-states. Now remember, these are all areas that are under the overall rule of Rome, but they have a certain autonomy. So Tyre and Sidon are city-states. Judea is important to them as a source of food. And there's this problem. Herod Agrippa has some kind of argument with the leaders of Tyre and Sidon, and they solve it by getting together to have a festival. And I use that word because Josephus calls this meeting what happened a festival. In other words, they're making an accord of some kind. They're making some kind of treaty, an agreement here to settle their differences. And so we see what happens here in verse 21.

Acts 12:21-22 "So on a set day Herod, arrayed in royal apparel, sat on his throne and gave an oration to them. And the people kept shouting, 'The voice of a god and not of a man!'"

Royal apparel. Now, once again, Josephus, as a historian, he's a pretty good historian like all historians though. Some of his material, you all know exactly where he got it from. So we can't take everything as absolute truth. But he does describe something here that we have no need to actually discount. He said what Agrippa did was sort of he needed to do a show here, you know, to show everybody how great he was. So what he did is he had a suit of clothing, this royal apparel, made of gold, or not gold, but silver thread on purpose. And on this, there's this big festival and they're in like an arena so that, you know, he can speak and his voice can boom out. Remember, they didn't have electronics. They had to build everything so that a person could stand in a certain place and if they could push their voice, it could be heard by everybody. You know, orators, you know, what was the great Greek orator that he said he taught his orators to speak by putting rocks in their mouths. And if they could learn to project their voice and make sense with their mouths full of rocks, then they would become great speakers. Because see, you had to be heard and understood over big areas. And so, you know, everything was designed for this to be pushed out.

And so here he has this silver clothing on. And according to Josephus, he had this planned because there was a time of day where the sun came over into this arena and he stepped out waiting for that exact moment and that sun hit this silver and he started to glow, he started to shine. And he booms out his voice and it echoes throughout the area and people are saying, "He's a god. He's glowing. He's a god. Listen to him speak." So in other words, this was all a show according to Josephus.

And there's no reason to think that he didn't do it that way because the Romans were famous for things like that. I mean, there's Roman temples where the temples were filled with all kinds of mechanics to make all kinds of things happen, to make the gods speak, to make them move around, all kinds of things to impress people. So, you know, if you ever study the emperors, you know that they were all experts at making themselves look bigger than human. So there's no reason to believe that this isn't what happened. And they're saying, "He's a god." Now remember, Herod reigned over an area, believed in the God of the Bible, and they proclaimed to be believers in the God of the Bible. And now he's standing there taking this acclaim. It's a way of boasting. It's a way of like, "Look at me and how special I am." And notice how God reacts.

Acts 12:23 "Then immediately an angel of the Lord struck him, because he did not give glory to God. He was eaten by worms and died," because he did not give glory to God.

This is all about me. Now there's moments in life where you're the center of attention. You know, you graduate from high school, you get married. Those are wonderful times. I'm not saying there's never a time which you're the center of attention. But those times are measured and real. Boasting is you have to be the center of attention all the time. It's all a show. And we can even do this with our Christianity. You know, it's very interesting. According to Josephus, he just didn't die right away. There were some kind of maggots, worms that got into his intestines, and it took him five agonizing days to die. Now we don't know whether it's instantaneous. I mean the Bible doesn't tell. If Josephus is right, that was horrible. But remember, God did it because he took glory that belonged to God and took it upon himself.

So we have to understand boasting. Constantly doing everything to parade ourselves. Not get acclaim when we should. You should. There's times to be honored. There's times to accept some kind of honor or award or whatever in life, in business. Those are fine. But parading yourself is to just constantly make yourself the center of attention. And this is part of a greater issue. It's part of a greater problem. And that's why the second thing that's listed here in 1 Corinthians 13 after "Not parading yourself," or "Not boasting," is "Not puffed up," or as the NIV says, "Not proud." We just went through agape is not envy. I was thinking of the verse and what the order was. It does say, "It's not envy," but then it says, "It's not proud." Now once again, pride. You know, there is a certain right kind of pride. A job well done. You work hard. You achieve something. I mean, you have certain pride in the way you look.

I remember someone a while back telling me that... I think they worked in Dollar General store. And one day they were just counting how many people came in. And it was like before 10:00 in the morning, something like a fourth to a third of the people came in, just wore their pajamas. Now, you got to have some pride in the way you look, okay? There is a proper pride that you present yourself a certain way, that you act a certain way. You do jobs a certain way. That's not what this is talking about.

Pride, in this negative sense, and we're going to find in the Bible, has to do with an exaggerated view of self. An exaggerated view of who you are. It is a belief, and it's both an emotional reaction and intellectual mental reaction. And the fact that it's both makes it very difficult to deal with because all of us have this at one degree or another. It is a belief that your opinions, your ideas, your way of looking at things, your needs are more important than anybody else's. In fact, the core of pride is a belief that somehow you're superior to others. That's why if you're truly prideful, it is really hard to say, "I'm wrong."

You know, my male pride. When I tell my wife, "You know, I was wrong," usually what she says is, "I'd like to hear that again." Man, the second time is tough. It's like, "Yeah I was..." "Okay." "No, no, no, this isn't wrong." "Yeah, it is.That's wrong. Yeah, that's what it means." We have a hard time, many of us, saying when we're wrong because of pride. But I'm weak. I'm not superior. I'm not better. If I'm wrong, then I have to admit it. And it's funny about pride. If you feel like anybody has ever somehow put you down or showed you up or taken away one of your rights, whatever it is, pride drives you to do something back to them. You have to tear them down. You have to put them down in front of other people. You have to make them look bad because, well, they hurt your pride.

Here are some of the things you and I need to know about pride in this negative sense, that agape has no pride, okay? It has no pride. Let me say something about God here. What is really amazing is when God says, "I am all-powerful, I am all-knowing, I am the ruler of the universe," that's not out of pride, that's a statement of fact. You really want to see how God...with all the power and all the righteousness. He's never wrong. He's never wrong. That's what's amazing. And yet God approaches us in the Book of Isaiah and He says, "Let us sit down and reason together." That's power. That's wisdom. That's might without pride. Come here, y'all little balls of dirt. All of you are wrong all the time. My creation, let's just sit down and talk. That's amazing. That's God. No pride, just power. He's got it all. But He's not driven by this insecurity. He's not driven by this need to control everything.

But pride is part of our corrupted human nature. One of the paradoxes of pride is if you're a really proud person, you're offending people all the time. And if you're a really proud person, you're being offended all the time. Proud people are in conflict constantly. because everything's about me, my viewpoint, my needs, my ideas, my need to control. And at the core, a belief that you're better than others. It really keeps us from loving others. I mean, how can you love other people when you're always trying to make them bend to your will? How can you do that?

Remember something. When we talk about agape, we're talking about the essential nature of God, correct? Pride is part of the essential nature of Satan. It's one of the reasons it drove him to try to overthrow God. I'm better than you, and I can do this and you can't. Secondly, pride motivates us to make very irrational decisions. They talk about male pride. I get that one. I mean, all human beings struggle with pride, but we have this male pride. And part of it's God. It motivates us to do better things, to work harder, but it also can turn into something that makes us make irrational decisions. Let's look at one instance in 2 Kings 5. I'm going to take a little time to tell this story, because I just love this story because I understand this guy, because it's exactly what I would do. Well, I hope I would now with someone with God's Spirit. But I mean, just in my normal male state, this is something I would do. What we have here is Naaman. Let's look at verse 1.

2 Kings 5:1 "Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great and honorable man in the eyes of his master, because by him the Lord had given victory to Syria. He was also a mighty man of valor and a leper."

So we have a man who is well respected. He's a commander of the army in Syria. He's a man of great personal courage. He's an honorable man. He tries to do what's good. He doesn't try to use his position to hurt and mistreat others, and he has leprosy. And I love this next verse because this leads into something here in a few minutes.

1 Kings 5:2-4 He says, "And the Syrians had gone out on raids, and had brought back a captive young girl from the land of Israel. And she waited on Naaman's wife. Then he said to her mistress, 'If only my master were with the prophet who is in Samaria! For he would heal him of his leprosy.' And Naaman went in and told his master, saying, 'Thus and thus does the girl who is from the land of Israel.'"

I also get a kick out of how the writers of Kings did this here. You notice how many times in the Bible someone will say something and then they'll say, and let me tell you what someone has said. And they'll repeat all of it. It's like shorthand. And he said thus and thus. That's very human. I always see the human aspects in the Bible, you know. Okay, let's not just write it all out again. I'll just put thus and thus. He just repeated what I just said.

2 Kings 5:5 "Then the king of Syria said, 'Go now, and I will send a letter to the king of Israel."

So Naaman goes to Israel. Now think about this. They're at war off and on with Israel all the time. He goes there with an entourage. He goes there with soldiers and servants, and here's his caravan coming into Israel. And he has all this wealth to give the king of Israel.

2 Kings 5:5-6 "So he departed and took with him 10 talents of silver, 6,000 shekels of gold, and 10 changes of clothing. And he brought the letter to the king of Israel, which said, now be advised when this letter comes to you, that I have sent Naaman my servant to you, that you may heal him of his leprosy."

So he shows up at the palace of the king of Israel. He has all this wealth, he has this practically little army with him of people, and he hands him this letter. Here is your sworn enemy, one of the generals of people who will keep raiding your country.

2 Kings 5:7 "And it happened, when the king of Israel read the letter, that he tore his clothes and said, 'Am I God, to kill and make alive, that this man sends a man to me to heal him of his leprosy? Therefore please consider, and see how he seeks to quarrel with me.'"

What he saw at this house is exactly what's happening between NATO and Russia over the Ukraine, one-upmanship, right? Oh, he knows I can't heal this guy. He sends a major general. What am I supposed to do? Maybe we ought to kill him so he can't get back and lead an army against us. But then we're going to be at war with Syria. We're already at war with Syria. They're raiding. Well, maybe we should raid them. You see the things are going, but you can just imagine the discussions that are taking place. This is just another way of trying to get us into a major war.

2 Kings 5:8-9 "So it was, when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, that he sent to the king, saying," now you tore your clothes as a sign of grieving or stress, "'Why have you torn your clothes? Please let him come to me, and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel.' Then Naaman went with his horses and chariot, and he stood at the door of Elisha's house."

Now I want you to visualize this. You know, here is a general from another country, a major power in the area. He shows up. He's not dressed like a beggar. He's got all this incredible armor probably and stuff on. He's there and his chariot. He's got cavalry around him. He has wagons with all his baggage and his servants with him. And he shows up at the house of Elisha.

2 Kings 5:10 And here's what happens. "And Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, 'Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored to you and you shall be clean.'"

I mean, you can imagine he shows up and some servant comes out of Elisha's house and says, "Yes?" He says, "Well, go tell your master that Naaman of Syria is here." And he runs back in and he runs back out and he says, "Go take a bath. Take seven baths. And it has to be in this river in Israel. I show up here now. We start to see the pride. I understand this is an important man. He's used to having served. He's used to having thousands of soldiers obey his commands, right? And he shows up and the man doesn't even come out of his little house to talk to him. He just said, "Go take a bath, seven of them, then you'll be okay." One gets furious.

2 Kings 5:11-12 "But Naaman became furious," verse 11, "and went away and said, 'Indeed, I said to myself he will surely come out to me, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the place, and heal the leprosy.'"

He said, "This was going to be a big show. I figured I'd show up, he'd come out, there'd be some incense, maybe some dancing girls. I don't know, there's going to be something going on. And then he'll probably send me to Jerusalem. Well, I have to go in and everybody will see me coming in and everybody ooh and all, and I'll bring up some bulls and some goats and some sheep and I'll have those priests there butcher these animals and offer them to God and I'll be healed." I mean, this is what happens when you're really important, right? And he doesn't even come out of the house. "Go take a bath." There you go.

He even goes on to talk about the rivers of Syria and say, "You know, our rivers are actually better in Syria. Have you seen the Jordan? It's like a creek. Why would he have me go to that river? Is it a magic river?

2 Kings 4:13-15 "So he turned away and went in rage." Verse 13, "And his servants came near and spoke to him, and said..." Now one of his servants... Some of his servants say, "Well, well, well." They come up to him and they say, "My father, if the prophet had told you to do something great, would you not have done it? How much more then, when he says, 'All you have to do is go wash and be clean?' So he went down and dipped seven times in the Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God, and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean." Now the next verse shows he learned the problem. "And he returned to the man of God, he and all his aides," so the entire entourage turns around and goes back to the house of Elisha, "and came and stood before him; and he said, 'Indeed, now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel; now therefore, please take a gift from your servant.'"

He says, "I get it now. This isn't about you, and it's not about me. It's about God." And Elisha says, "Yeah, and don't bother giving me a gift, I won't take it. Because it's not about me, and it's not about you, it's about God." This great male pride... I'm sorry ladies, you'll get off either. This great male pride had to be taken down a notch. He had to understand that this had nothing to do with his position or the greatness of Syria or anything else. And that's why Elisha wouldn't even come out and talk to him at first. God just says go do this. Go take a bath. God healed him.

See, pride drives us to make irrational decisions. He would have gone home and started escalating towards war more. Look how I was treated in Israel. We need to do this. And they would have taken up one more grudge, another raid, or another taking of some of Israel's maybe top officials and driving them out of Syria by treating them badly. They would have kept ratcheting it up. Three, pride blocks our relationship with God, And this is really important. This is really important. Proverbs 16. We don't know. It's hard for us to understand because pride is part of our corrupt human nature. And once again, even telling the difference between the proper kind of pride and the wrong kind of pride, we have to be careful.

Proverbs 16:5 "Everyone proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord."

Abomination. That word, that literally means one individual looks at something else. It's about the response of an individual, okay? It isn't just about we say, "Well, that's a disgusting..." You know, they bring out... I've been overseas in parts of Europe where they bring out the fish with the head on it, which doesn't bother me, but I've heard people say, "Well, that disgusting fish." Now, okay, this is an individual not saying that's disgusting, it's saying you are disgusting, or that thing is repulsive to me at a deep, guttural level. It's used by God on how He reacts to people who commit violent crime, about people who rape women. You are an abomination. You are repulsive to me. And he says the proud are repulsive to God. Play this agape stuff. This is tough. Let's go back and talk about something else. Look in verse 18.

Proverbs 16:18 "Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. Better to be of a humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud."

He says it's better to live in poverty with poor people than to have everything that rich people have and have their pride. Now pride, poor, rich, doesn't matter. There can be humble people among the rich and proud people among the poor. I'm poor and proud of it. Or like one man used to joke all the time, "I am humble and proud of it."

There's a verse we read all the time. I'm going to read this. You don't have to turn there, but I want you to remember it because it's going to be important in something we'll look at in just a few minutes here. It's in James, where James writes, "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble." When we are being proud, when we are living by this state of pridefulness, where we're looking at ourselves and say, "This is about me, it's about parading me, it's about everybody looking at me, it's about me being the center of attention all the time. Well, we're like that, and we're taking glory that belongs to God and trying to apply it to ourselves. It says God resists them. God pushes back. He resists when we're proud. So when I'm being proud in the wrong way, God's pushing me back. It's an odd way to put it, isn't it? He resists them. We'll come back to that in just a few minutes here.

And then another thing... And this list could have gone on and on, I finally took a whole bunch of things off, because I realized I didn't want to do a three-hour sermon. Another thing we need to be aware of is that pride motivates us to harshly judge others, okay? Harshly judge others. Let's go to Galatians 6. Paul's writing here to the church in Galatia.

Galatians 6:1 He says, "Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual," okay, this is a sign of being spiritual, being right with God, "you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you also be tempted."

Now this is very important. He's not saying never judge something is wrong. This person has been judged for doing something wrong and they will have repented. You can't restore somebody who hasn't repented. So they've been judged. So we can't say we never judge. We went through that in the disciple Bible study here recently. We've been going through the Sermon on the Mount. We went through judging. We have to make judgments that are made by God. We have to say, no, that is wrong in our own lives and in the lives of others. But here he's saying, okay, you've made a judgment. Everybody can see that this wrong thing happened. They must be restored.

I've known situations where people have said, "I won't be in a church with someone who..." Fill in the blank. I won't be in a church with somebody who committed adultery. I won't be in a church with someone who years ago was put in jail for molesting a child. I'm just giving an example of that. This has happened numerous times years ago. Or a person I came in contact with wanted to come to church at 18, 19, 20, old enough that they were considered an adult. This is twice I dealt with men like this.

We're at a party where everybody was drinking, everybody smoking dope. Yeah, they had sex with a 16-year-old girl. The one man told me, "How was I supposed to know? I mean, she dressed just like everybody else. She acted just like everybody else. I had no idea how old she was." I didn't care. I mean, we all went to these parties to get drunk and pick up a girl. And most everybody there was in college, you know, and here's a 16-year-old girl. Well, mama found out. He put seven years in jail for that. When he came out no one would accept him in anything because he was a registered sex offender. The girl, who was a willing partner, got off free.

Now I'm not saying it was right. I'm not saying it was right. According to the law of God, what he did was a sin. What she did was a sin. But she didn't have to spend seven years in jail. He could never adapt. He couldn't even come to church. He couldn't understand how to relate to people. Those formative years in his early 20s was spent in a penitentiary, and he had no idea how to relate. How are we supposed to treat that? The Apostle Paul says, "Let's restore them the best we can here." He said, "Everybody's going to find out." I said, "Yeah, they will. We'll have to deal with it." And yeah, no one's going to let you be part of the team, you know, be a teacher of the team group, okay? That's never going to happen. That's the price you pay. He understood that, but he never could adjust to anything.

We have to consider who we are too when we deal with other people. Now, if he wasn't repentant, he would not be allowed to come to church. You understand that? Simple. It's a simple issue. If you're not repentant, you can't come to church. But what do you do when a person is in that kind of situation?

Galatians 6:2 He says, "Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ."

Now notice how he puts this in the middle. This seems unrelated to what we're talking about till you get to this point.

Galatians 6:3 "For if anyone thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself."

The greater we think we are, thank you, Lord, I'm not like anybody else, the more we're deceiving ourselves. The more we're deceiving ourselves.

Galatians 6:4-5 "But let each one examine his own work, and then he will have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another. For each one shall bear his own load."

And everybody bears loads for their past and our present, right? We carry loads. Okay, we could go through example after example in the Scripture about pride and what it does, the actions here, how we treat God, how we treat other people based on pride, not on agape. Why? Why is it so hard? And why is pride so destructive? Well, I want to use this one example here from the Scripture to delve into a core issue that has to do with James said, what he wrote, "God resists the proud."

Let's go to 1 Samuel 15. 1 Samuel 15. We have the story here of Saul, King Saul. The Amalekites have become such an evil people. The God tells Israelites, "You go kill them. You take these encampments, these places where they live, and you just kill everybody. You even kill their livestock because they're just going to continue to perpetrate evil into the Israelite culture." So they did. Saul went out and he killed and destroyed the Amalekite army in the villages and then he showed up back in Israel, and Samuel was there. Well, he sorta did it all. He had the Amalekite kings with him and he had all the livestock, which would have been a huge amount of wealth, especially in agricultural society. He brought back all the wealth with him, all the sheep and the goats, all the cows, everything, these huge flocks from these people he brought back.

And Samuel approaches him, and he says, "Well, we can bring the kings back so we can kill them here in front of everybody." Now, you have to understand, in that society, capturing or killing the kings of the opposing army or the opposing state that you were attacking, nation, was considered the greatest honor you could receive. I mean, that was all through the ancient world, even up to the time of Rome. If you could capture... Now, you know, ancient leaders of nations and tribes did not want to be captured by the Romans because they'd parade them down the streets in Rome. They would be part of a giant parade where hundreds of thousands of people would come up and throw things at them because you're subjugated by Rome. You don't want to be captured.

He brought him back. He brought him back for glory. And he eventually tells Samuel, "Well, let me tell you the truth. I brought him back because the people wanted it and I did it. I did it for them." He did it for popularity. Saul made himself the center of what was going on. And he tried to control events to get what he wanted. He wanted all the credit for destroying the Amalekites. He wanted all the people to see him as a great king and a great warrior when he had an opportunity to be seen by all the people as a great man of God, and it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough to be a great man of God. He wanted that, and to be a rock star too. He wanted to be a celebrity. He wanted to be liked by everybody.

And here's what Samuel says to him in verse 22.

1 Samuel 15:22-23 "Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than that of the fat of rams." He says you think God wanted all these sacrifices? That's what He's after? He just wanted that evil that had encroached into Israel to be destroyed, so they could stay a decent, good people. That's all He wanted. And then he says, a very famous verse, "For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft." Now that has been quoted many times. In my lifetime I've heard that quoted many times. The second half of the sentence isn't that well-known. "And stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry."

Stubbornness, is that idolatry? So worshiping Baal or Moloch? I mean, how does that even make sense? The Hebrew word here that's translated stubbornness is one of those words that must drive translators crazy. You know, how many times do you hear people say, "Well, I just want a literal translation of the Bible?" Well, I'd like the Bible to be as literal as possible, but you realize if you translated every word literally, much of it would not make any sense to you. It's like all the places in...

You'll find many places in the Bible where it talks about your heart. You know, how you feel that in your heart, or you're expressing your heart, or...you know. And if you look it up in Hebrew, it's your kidneys. Not every place. Heart meant something. But kidneys meant something. We're not sure what kidneys meant. I mean, I've read all kinds of ideas of what it meant, but it meant something 4,000 years ago. Feeling something in your kidneys, I don't know. I'm not sure what that means. So they translated heart because it captures the meaning.

This word here, the translated stubbornness, isn't used that often in the Old Testament. It literally means to urge or press. Okay, urging is like idolatry. Pressing is like idolatry. Let me give you one verse or one place in the Bible where this is translated. Well, let's go there. Genesis 19. We'll come right back here. Genesis 19, because I want to show you something. Because there's just not that many, but there are places. And verse 3. This is where the angels come into Sodom and Lot wants them to come into his house for the night, and they say no.

Genesis 19:3 And it says, "And he insisted strongly."

So finally, they turned into him and entered his house. They said no. He insisted strongly. It's the same word that's used for stubbornness in 1 Samuel. He wouldn't let go of this. He just kept urging them till they said okay. Just like in verse 9.

Genesis 19:9 "And they said, 'Stand back!'" This is where the house is surrounded by these men and they're going to take Lot, right? And they're going to abuse him and the men that are with him and his daughters. He stand back. "Then they said, 'This one came in to stay here and he keeps acting as a judge; now we will deal worse with you than with them.' So they pressed hard."

There's that same word. They pressed hard. Now, when you read these two passages, something becomes apparent. The whole point of this word is you are pushing your will. You're pushing what you were going to press. That's why in 1 Samuel it says stubbornness. The Jewish Publication Society, they translate that as defiance. The NIV is arrogance. The New American Standard as insubordination.

I looked up the meaning of that word and how it can be used. Well, it means to urge or press. And, of course, by inference, it means stubbornness, defiance, arrogance, and insubordination. The point is, you're pushing it, you're pressing it. Your will is going to be done. Now, I want you to think about it. Now, I'm not saying James said this in reference to this because he's writing in Greek, you know, but it's an interesting concept. What does God do to the proud who are pushing against Him that their will be done? It says He resists. God push back. You don't want to get in a shoving war with God.

As I've told you before, I used to tell my son when he was young, "Don't get in a boxing match with God. Your arms are too short." So literally, he's saying here, pushing against God, this stubbornness you have, this pushing, is the same as idolatry, it's same as worshipping idols. How can that be? You have to think this through. How can this stubborn, arrogant, pushing against God, this pride? And then you realize something. When we are arrogantly pushing against God, refusing to submit to Him, pushing back with our will, it's a self-will, which is at the core of pride.

Who is your idol? Are you worshiping and trusting and serving God, or are you worshiping and serving and trusting yourself? You've made yourself into an idol. That gets a little complicated, doesn't it? We make ourselves into idols because we try to get in this pressing. I'm going to press against God to get what I want. Once again, stubbornness could be a good thing, but we've all seen stubborn people that we also...oh, man, they're just so stubborn, they're stupid, right? It's pretty stupid to press against God because He resists that. Fortunately, He doesn't always push back that hard because it's no contest. It's no contest.

Quickly then. How can we deal with pride? First of all, we have to understand the reality of it. We have to look into ourselves and realize it's there. At different levels, it's there. We're not to give up the right kind of pride. But this wrong kind of pride builds a barrier between us and God, where we always must be the center. We always must be seen by others as somebody. We always must control everything so that our opinions and our ways are the ways things are done.

Two, and this is really important. You have to pray. I mean, this is a conscious thing you must do. You must pray. Seek the Scriptures, look in the Scriptures, and fast for humility because it doesn't come natural. We have to pray, we have to study the Scriptures, what it says about pride and humility, and you have to fast for it. You have to humble yourselves before God and ask God to give you humility. And once you do, it's not an easy journey. There's no easy journey in that, by the way. I have to tell you that. There's no easy journey in asking God to help you be humble. That's why you always say, "Help me to understand humility and learn humility with mercy." You don't want it all at once. You don't want humility all at once, but you must pray for it and seek it in the Scriptures, and you must fast about it, and you must continue to do that.

Number three, you have to learn to forgive quickly. I mean, anything I'm telling you, I'm still learning from experience. You have to learn to forgive quickly, because if you don't you will begin to defend yourself till you become the center of everything, and what somebody else has done to you is all you think about. Not God, not the good things in life, but what somebody else has done to you.

And then the last thing, you must learn to have genuine interest in others. We actually must care for others. We must listen to each other. Share stories and then listen to theirs. We must think about each other. You know, when Norma Hendricks called me this week because she wasn't feeling well, and said, "Hey, send me a cloth," I said, "You know what, Norma? Kim and I, I don't know how many times in the last few weeks have said, 'I wonder how Norma's doing,' but I didn't call you. I felt bad." She needed an apology because I should have.

We have to take time to do that because we get so wrapped up in what we're doing. You know, so much of the joy of life is what? Sharing this with everybody else. That's the joy of life. It is not playing video games for eight hours a day, and it is not seeing how many likes you can get on Facebook. It's not Twitter. I'm not saying those things are evil. I'm just saying that's not where this happens. Agape doesn't happen there. I suppose it can in limited ways. Agape comes with people. I'm sure glad that God doesn't interact to us only through email, although it'd be nice to get one from Him, but how would you know it's from Him? That's the problem. Think about that one.

Now this kind of interaction takes time and it takes effort, but we have to do that. There's a humility in that. There's humility in our interaction with each other. Agape cannot flourish where there's boasting and pride. It can't. Agape requires that we humbly put the welfare of others above ourselves. Jesus served the weak, helped the poor and the sick. He stooped down and washed the feet of the disciples. We talked about that already, and understanding what agape is. It is an important part of what we must learn and become to be the children of God, and none of us, none of us have this now. We're all working on this.

But remember, and there's a warning to this because it's not like agape is this and it's a good thing. Do this, and we'll see. Agape is kind. There's a good thing, right? He doesn't say agape is not cruel. It says it is kind. He's positive. But interesting with this, he says agape is not proud. He didn't say it's humble. He takes the negative approach here because that's what we usually are. He says that's what it isn't. That's what it's not.

So remember, one of the greatest things we face, obstacles to us growing in the way we're supposed to be as the children of God is the fact that deep inside our own nature, we all have boasting and pride.