Boasting (Part 1)

No Compromise Radio. Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Abendroff. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures, verse by verse, with No Compromise.

Boasting in Self Versus Giving God the Glory

Did you know self-promotion is always a bad idea? You know boasting in self is a grievous sin? Did you know the Bible irregularly punctuates punishment for those who would boast in self? Take your Bibles and turn with me to Acts chapter 12 for our introduction this morning and we'll look at one of the original Muhammad Ali's.

I am the greatest. Muhammad Ali in our day and age celebrated, imitated, promoted, but pride goes way back. It can go farther back than Acts chapter 12. But let's take a look at Acts chapter 12 and look at a man who loved to boast in himself.

As you know, we've been looking at 1 Corinthians about boasting in the Lord, never boasting before the Lord, boasting because of the Lord, not boasting because we've done something wonderful. And as I was reading my Bible this week, I came across Acts chapter 12 and I thought this is exactly what not to do.

Here's a good illustration of the wrong way to go about life. And this is the kind of attitude that, left to ourselves, we would just engage in. This is the kind of attitude that looking at 1 Corinthians will, by the grace of God, cease and desist from.

Acts chapter 12, so far James has been killed, Peter has been attempted, they attempted to kill Peter, but they just put him in jail. And now we come to the man who is the culprit and his name is Herod.

This is Herod Agrippa I, king of Judea, son, grandson of Herod the Great. Acts chapter 12, verse 20, now Herod was angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon and they came to him with one accord and having persuaded Blastus, the king's chamberlain, they asked for peace because their country depended on the king's country for food.

Here is this man who's half Jewish, king Herod Agrippa I, and he always tried to get on the good side of the Jews and there's some people far away that depend on Herod for food and there's been some kind of scuffle and they now come and they want to make peace with Herod because they want more food.

These people up in Tyre and Sidon want an audience with the king and so they go through the king's special envoy, the chamberlain Blastus, and they want to have peace. Some kind of economic blockade, it's crippling the people up in Tyre and Sidon and so they persuade him with money, with words, with everything we don't know.

And Herod thought, well while you're here, we have this festival that happens every five years, why don't you come and take a look at me while I demonstrate my greatness. Verse 21, on an appointed day, Herod put on his royal robes, took a seat upon the throne and delivered an oration to them.

You can just almost see Herod, here's these people coming up begging for food and he's kind of fluffing his plume and his feathers and he's showing how great he is. Now come and watch me for a while. Josephus is an unbelieving Jewish historian who said that this was a feast in honor of Herod's patron, the Roman emperor Claudius, held every five years.

And Josephus says that at daybreak, Herod walks out into this big amphitheater, purposely for what reason? Josephus says, after the completion of the third year of his reign over the whole of Judea, Agrippa came to the city of Caesarea.

Here he celebrated spectacles in honor of Caesar. On the second day of the spectacles, clad in a garment woven completely of silver, so that its texture was indeed wondrous, he clad out in daybreak, he strolled out.

So the sun comes out, you see, Herod, with all the silver, what an amazing sight that must have been, Herod thought. Josephus says, there the silver, illumined by the touch of the first rays of the sun, was wondrously radiant and by its glitter inspired fear and awe in those who gazed intently upon it.

Verse 22, you know it did, and the people were shouting, the voice of a God and not a man. I don't think that was loud enough. The voice of a God and not a man. The voice of a God. It was over and over repeating, this is a God.

The God is with us. Josephus says that they started shouting out, may you be propitious to us. And if we have hereto feared you as a man, yet henceforth we agree that you are more than mortal in your being.

What should the king have done? He should have done what others had done. I'm just a man, don't worship me. Josephus says he did not reject their flattery. Now occasionally in the Bible, God uses an angel for judgment.

Occasionally he uses an angel for public execution. He's used angels to kill 185 ,000 Assyrian soldiers in one night. And hear this, God who's jealous for his own glory, rightfully so, boy I'm sure glad we sang that last song by the way Charlie, not unto us.

And here is the man who says, forget it, let's turn it around unto me. I received the glory. I'm the king. I have the grain. I'm the wonderful God. Verse 23, immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down.

Divine judgment. Josephus said, shortly thereafter he looked up and saw an owl perched on a rope over his head. At once recognizing this as a harbinger of his woes, he felt a stab of pain in his heart.

He was also gripped in his stomach by an ache that he felt everywhere at once and that was intense from the start. Why did the Lord strike him down? What does the text say? Acts 12, 23. Because he did not give God the, what? Glory.

I'm God, move over. It's as if he was saying, you know, here comes the fourth person of the Trinity. So much different than two chapters before. Don't look there. But on the following day, they entered Caesarea.

Cornelius was expecting them and they had called together his relatives and close friends. When Peter entered, Cornelius met him and fell down at his feet and worshiped Peter. But Peter lifted him up saying, stand up.

I too am a man. That is exactly what Herod should have done. He didn't give God the glory. He was struck down by an angel and then could it get worse? Look at verse 23. If you're a young man here sitting here today, you're never going to forget this as long as you live.

And he was eaten by worms and breathed his last. He's eaten by worms, lived five more days and died. Calvin said, Herod's body reeked because of decay so that he was nothing more than a living carcass.

The angel of the Lord. There's other people in church history, Antiochus Epiphanes and 2nd Maccabees. It says that he was a tyrant and he persecuted the Jews, quote. And so the ungodly man's body swarmed with worms.

And while he was still living in anguish and pain, his flesh rotted away. And because of his stench, the whole army felt revulsion at his decay. If the bakers felt revulsion, that'd be one thing. But the whole army, I'm God, struck him down.

Dr. Morton says the phrase eaten of worms in Greek is skolat bratas. The root word skolax means a specific head structure of the tapeworm. Since the word skolex, plural skoloses, is applied to the head of tapeworms, Herod's death was almost certainly due to the rupture of a cyst formed by a tapeworm.

There were several kinds of tapeworms, but one of the most common ones found in sheep-growing countries is the dog tapeworm. The heaviest infections come from areas where sheep and cattle are raised.

Sheep and cattle serve as intermediate hosts, the doctor says, for the parasite. The dog eats infected meat. The man gets the eggs from the dog, usually by contamination of hair. The disease is characterized by the formation of cysts, generally on the right lobe of the liver.

These may extend down into the abdominal cavity. The rupture of a cyst like this may release as many as two million skoloses. The developing worms inside the cyst are usually called skoloses because the anterior region constitutes the major part of the development of the stage.

When the cyst ruptures, the entrance of the cellular debris along with the skoloses cause sudden death. Welcome to Bethlehem Bible Church. At the beginning of the chapter, James killed. Peter put in prison.

Herod on display. But what happens at the end of the chapter? Look at the next verse. Acts chapter 12, verse 24. But the word of God increased and multiplied. James is in heaven. Peter's out of jail. Herod's dead.

And the word goes forth. When I read that story, I say to myself, God forbid that I would boast in anything or anyone but the cross of Christ and my Savior Christ Jesus. And we live in a culture that promotes self-boasting to the degree that I thought it's good once in a while to just put a picture before our eyes where we say, you know, the wages of self-boasting is Skolek's death.

It's not about us and it never has been. So let's go to 1 Corinthians as we've seen in the last week. God does things strange ways. He saves people with a strange cross and he actually saves strange people.

I think Herod would have been better off to sing Isaac Watt's song. Not to my name, thou only just and true. Not to my worthless name as glory do. Thy power and grace, thy truth and justice claim. Immortal honors to thy sovereign name.

That's exactly what Paul wanted to have happen to the church of Corinth. They were getting into this party kind of factionalism and they were saying, you know, let's follow this guy. Let's boast about my teacher, my pastor, my Barnabas, my Paul.

Paul says it's all about giving glory to God and God alone. As I said last week to start off the message, we are born boasters. We like to boast. We're good at boasting, but we need to put our boasting to the right object, Christ Jesus, with the right motives so that he might increase and that we might decrease.

The Corinthians’ Humble Origins and God’s Sovereign Choice

Before we get into the message today, just a quick background on the book of 1 Corinthians. Paul is writing to these carnal Corinthians to correct their behavior. So you say, well, pastor, why'd you pick this book?

Is it good for our congregation? Yes, in the sense that I think we're far from it. Even, by the way, I think I could say this now. In the last week, thank you for loving the people at Bethlehem Bible Church.

Thank you for going out of your way in sacrificial love. All kinds of behind the scenes things are going on. And in front of everyone as well, we've had visiting when Scott walked in, we thought he had his heart attack.

People visiting Blake at the hospital. Even the lady that I get the email this week, you're from Nebraska, we're from Nebraska. There's a lady in Boston at Mass General. She doesn't know anyone. She's 18.

She's had this massive surgery. Do you think if some people could visit and then have people from the church visiting? How wonderful is that? So I say, thank you for that. I don't think we're Corinth, but you know what?

I never want to be Corinth. Just as good preventative maintenance where you say, here's what the Lord says. Let's run far from these kind of carnal Corinthians and their attitudes. So Paul says, boast in other people.

No. Boast in yourself. No. Boast in being the biggest and the best and the strongest and the richest. No. He says the boasting should be in God. And look at what God does. Let's look at verses 18 through 25.

God says the wisdom of the world wants to save people. And only the message of Christ Jesus can save people. It's counterintuitive to Jewish and Greek expectations. And not only that, not just how God saves, but who God saves.

Verses 26 through 31. I have to tell you right now that God usually saves nobody. He doesn't save the beautiful people. That's just what God does. So let me give you three deliberations this morning. Three considerations designed to make you conclude that God alone must receive all the glory and the boasting.

To just dive in to show you how I came up with this proposition. Verse 29, so that no man may boast before God. Verse 31, let him who boasts, boast in the Lord. You don't boast before God, you boast in God.

The preposition means a world of difference. God doesn't care what wisdom of the world says or does or thinks. He has his own way to do things. And he despises those who glorify themselves. Sliding God, ignoring God, refusing to acknowledge God.

And left to ourselves, we'd be that kind of person too. But we've been saved, we've been redeemed. We know the gospel and now we see God's word. Consideration number one. If you consider God's choice of people, you'll never boast in those people.

We saw this just briefly last week. I repent for preaching only a 30-minute sermon. I'll never do it again. Somebody came up and said, what's the longest you've ever preached? I said, it was a 90-minute sermon.

Because I asked the pastor, how long do you preach? And he said, 90 minutes. I said, well, how long do you want me to preach? He said, 90 minutes. He said, at 45 minutes. This will date me, especially young folks.

He said, at 45 minutes, you look at the guy in the sound booth and go like this. I said, look at the guy at the sound booth and go like this. Yeah. What's this mean? This means flip the tape over. It's a 90-minute tape.

So there you go. I had two more minutes. It was probably a 92-minute tape. Last week, we saw that Paul is trying to say, Corinthian church member, you have a pretty humble origin. You have a pretty humble origin.

Look what he says. For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise, according to the flesh, the world's perspective didn't say, wow, those are movers and shakers, not many mighty, not many noble.

God uses people like the church of Corinth for his work to show his greatness because they're weak. God uses people like us for his work because we're weak. And then he gets the glory when the good things happen.

And the church of Corinth needed to be reminded of this very thing. It would be good for us if we just considered that as well. That word consider means to contemplate or meditate. When's the last time you just sat and thought, do you know, I have received everything in my life, 1 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 7.

What do I have that I haven't received, that I haven't received from God? I should be very humble. What were we like when we were called? Paul says, I want to defy the logic of the world. The world picks differently.

I want to destroy the world's logic. They pick differently. Whoever wants to be judged by the world's standards anyway, you probably heard this before, but I love the story of Voltaire, the French philosopher agnostic.

And he basically said within 50 years, people will forget Christianity. He hated Jesus Christ and he did everything he could to stop Jesus Christ. But the very year that he thought Christianity should be dead, the British Museum purchased a Bible manuscript from Russia for $500 ,000 while Voltaire books were being sold in stalls in Paris for $0 .08 each.

But that's not the best part. 50 years after this prediction, the Geneva Bible Society was running off thousands of Bibles on presses that had been set up in Voltaire's former home in Geneva. Of course, they're going to look at things differently.

And of course, there are a few people in Corinth that were somebodies. And in church history, there are a few somebodies. Crispus and Sosthenes, rulers of the synagogue. Erastus, the chancellor of the city of Corinth.

But there are not many, not many higher ups, not many upper echelon status people. Not many, as MacArthur says, mucky mucks. Well, there's a few, but there's not many. Number two, the second consideration, that was just review.

God’s Sovereign Choice of the Foolish, Weak, and Despised

Number two, if you consider God's choice as sovereign, you will never boast in people. If you consider God's choice as sovereign, you will never boast in people. Now, first he says, think about your humble origins.

Now he's going to give a theological statement. And this theological statement has the same design as the cross. And that is to make you think that's not how the world does it. And God gets all the glory.

Now, for those of you that don't like this following language, it's in the Bible. I don't know what to tell you. And you'll see three times in this verse, verse 27 and verse 28, God has chosen. God is sovereign and he chooses.

God, by definition, chooses. Verse 27, look at these three times where God chooses. This is not salvation. This is God choosing this kind of person. We're not talking about some kind of election. We're talking about the general decree of God's sovereignty.

He just chooses these kind of people. Verse 27, but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. And God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong.

And the base things of the world and the despised. God has chosen the things that are not that he might nullify the things that are. Corinth, you're not mighty. You're not wise. You're not strong. You're not noble.

Nor did you just stumble into this relationship with Jesus. One day I was walking around and I was in the temple. A temple taught prostitution was going on. And the next minute I thought, oh, by chance, by luck, by fortuitous fortune, I'm now following Jesus.

God has chosen. He didn't stumble into anything great. God chose them to hear it. He has a purpose for that. Why? Because if he picks the great people, the church grows. Everybody goes, what? The great people grew the church.

And if he picks the losers, the nothings, and the church grows, and the word, like in Acts 12, multiplies, everyone says, God is great. James is dead. Peter's in jail. And the word increases. Look at the first God has chosen.

God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. To shame the wise. Now, by the way, if you read this like I first read it, to shame the wise, to make them feel guilty, kind of the pangs of subjective guilt.

This is eternal disgrace. Eternal shame. That one day on judgment day, there will be plenty of shame. And that's what he's talking about. Look at the second one. God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things that are strong.

That's his plan. Pick the low. Pick the despised. Pick the weak. Pick the sinful. And the base things of the world. The low born. Low birth. Despicable people he chooses. God has chosen the things that are not.

This is the wildest one. All right, here we go. This word means the nothings. God has chosen the nothings of the world. How's your self-esteem doing? The nothings. He chooses the nothings. I think forget seeker sensitive church services.

We're gonna start something brand new around here. It's called the nothing service. If you're a nobody, please come. Boy, they're gonna be lined up down 110. Aren't they for that? He chooses the empty set people.

He chooses the null people. And of course, think about what Paul's doing. The Corinthians glorify men. Oh, this is Socrates. This is Barnabas. This is Plato. This is Paul. We'll follow all them. And Paul says the inspired word of God through Paul.

They're nobodies. I did some study. When a man of rank among the Hindu speaks of low caste persons, he calls them in Hindi, those who are not. They're not scholars and Brahmins. They're not even merchants or workers.

They're the lowest on the rung of the caste system in India. They're untouchables. That's the idea here. God picks the people who aren't even in the caste system in India. And you want to know the wildest thing?

Here's your interesting point of the day. To emphasize this, Paul doesn't even use personal pronouns. He uses a neuter. He doesn't even call them people. You see what's going on here? Look at verse 27.

Things, things, things. Three times in verse 27 and two times in verse 28. Things, things. He chooses it's. It's like having people in your home and their servants and you call them the help. No personal pronoun.

It's like when you see a bunch of people killed, people say that that's the body count. So little value. They're not even individuals. Why does he do this? That he might nullify or render inoperative the things that are.

So we're going to boast in the right kind of person. The God man.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's Word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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