No. 1 problem for preachers? Pride

Luke 9:54-55 says, [54] And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did?
[55] But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.

“How did Jesus Christ know what manner of spirit they were? He identified it by the words that came out of their mouths. The words communicated what was inside and there was this spiritual identification and revelation of what was inside of them based on the words that came out of their mouth," explains Richard Jordan.

“There’s a great verse in Job 34:3 about this: [3] For the ear trieth words, as the mouth tasteth meat.

"You know what, bologna and corned beef don’t taste alike. You can always tell the difference. Well, just like your tongue can distinguish, your ear can try what’s going on in words.

“In Job 26 is a series of questions. Somebody suggested to me one time that these would be good questions that might appear at the judgment seat of Christ when God’s going to try the quality of every man’s work by fire.

“What Job is doing is responding to Bildad’s charges. It reads, [1] But Job answered and said,

[2] How hast thou helped him that is without power? how savest thou the arm that hath no strength?
[3] How hast thou counselled him that hath no wisdom? and how hast thou plentifully declared the thing as it is?
[4] To whom hast thou uttered words? and whose spirit came from thee?

"When Paul talks about seducing spirits, he’s talking about, ‘Here’s some preachers that when they communicate, what they’re communicating is designed to seduce—seducing words of man’s wisdom.’ "

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“What people come to realize is ‘right division’ of the Scripture IS what the Scriptures teach!" says Michigan preacher Tom Bruscha. "The question everybody has when they finally see this truth is, ‘How come everybody’s not teaching this?! Don’t they know?!’

“Well, they know it. They got other names for it: Ultra-dispensationalism, hyper-dispensationalism, etc. They know what it is.

“So, why is it you can look at it and see, ‘Man, look how many verses now go together! Look how many times Paul says he’s the Apostle to the Gentiles!’?

“You know it’s there! It doesn’t take a whole lot of searching to see it! And so young believers in right division always wonder why the preachers don’t see it.

“Paul writes in I Timothy 6: [3] If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness;
[4] He is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings,
[5] Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself.’

“If a person doesn’t teach those things, what does the Bible say? ‘He is proud, knowing nothing’! I look at some of these guys who don’t know right division and I say, ‘Well, they know SOME things.’

“You know they got some good things to say, but the Scripture says that the man who’s not acknowledging the truth of right division, which is on all the pages of Paul’s epistles and even in Peter’s epistles, that that man is ‘proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings, perverse disputings . . .’

“The Bible speaks for itself, doesn’t it? I guess you have to decide whether you want to be likeminded, right? Likeminded with the prideful speaker who denies the truth of God’s Word or likeminded with God’s Word that you need to separate from that man.

“What hinders common people from understanding grace truth are the preachers that are out there. Pride is the No. 1 problem in the ministry and the verses speak for themselves concerning that.

“No matter where you are and how you present yourself, deep down inside you’re No. 1 problem in your life is pride.

“It manifests itself in different ways but pride, when you think about the Bible’s sins—when it talks about not bearing false witness, not committing adultery, not stealing and thou shalt not kill, those are certainly things you sin against other people.

“But when it comes to the sin of pride, pride is a spiritual sin. It’s when, like in I John, it says, ‘All that’s in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. They’re not of the Father; they’re of the world.’

“The pride of life is really a sin deep down inside each one of us that really there’s no way we’re going to control that in our own flesh because it’s THERE. You can be, as we joke about, ‘proud of your humility,’ because, deep down, you’ve got a pride problem.

“It will manifest itself in different ways, so when Paul says, ‘Don’t do anything through strife and vainglory,’ we got to knock the pride down, knock it out and we’re not going to be able to do that. It’s going to take the Word of God and it’s going to take the Spirit of God in us to understand what God’s Word says about these things so we can combat it.

“It’s a spiritual sin. The word 'strife' actually means contention. And when Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he says he heard there were contentions among them. In chapter 3, he says those contentions are carnal, whereas there’s envy, strife and division among the people. It is the very sin when Satan appeared to Adam and Eve and he wanted to tempt them, the thing that he said to them was, ‘Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.’ 

“So, it was that direct disobedience through that temptation of the idea they could be as gods. That is the very root of sin itself.

“Proverbs 13:10 is a simple verse but, boy, you can’t get around it no matter what you do. It says, ‘Only by pride cometh contention: but with the well advised is wisdom.’ "