In this enlightening episode, Rick Hughes explores the remarkable story of the Samaritan woman and her transformative interaction with Jesus Christ. Through her story, we gain insight into how God can use anyone, regardless of past mistakes, to effect profound change. Rick further expounds on the pivotal role of John the Baptist as a foremost preacher of repentance, providing listeners with a deeper understanding of the essence of spiritual leadership and influence that extends beyond personal capabilities to divine calling.
Welcome to the Flatline with your host, Rick Hughes. For the next 30 minutes, you’ll be inspired, motivated, educated, but never manipulated. Now, your host, Rick Hughes.
SPEAKER 01 :
Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and I invite you to stick around for the next few minutes. 30 minutes of motivation, a little inspiration, a whole lot of education. Absolutely no manipulation, no solicitations, not asking for money. Just trying to give you some accurate information that will help you verify and identify God’s plan for your life if you’re interested. And if you are, you can orient and adjust to the plan. That’s up to you. You have your own volition, your own life, your own privacy. You’re responsible for your own decisions, and remember, bad decisions limit future options. That’s why we talk about having a flat line in your soul, a main line of resistance, an F-L-O-T, forward line of troops, which is a main line of resistance. If you have that in your soul, it’s called wisdom, biblical wisdom. Wisdom comes from the Word of God, and when you have it, that wisdom gives you insight and discernment. Thus, you save yourself a lot of trouble, a lot of worry, a lot of mistakes, a lot of heartache, because you make consistently good decisions based on what the Word of God says, not what the cosmic viewpoint is. The cosmic system is always offering the devil’s plan, the devil’s viewpoint. Money will make you happy, sex will give you fulfillment, those sort of things, and that’s just not true. The real happiness that we’re looking for, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior said it, happiness belongs to those people who hear my Father’s word and keep it. That’s where the true joy comes in. To live a life free of guilt, to live a life free of worry, to live a life free of bitterness, that is the Christian life. And that’s what having a flatline is all about. If you can live that sort of life, if you can grow spiritually and be the man or the woman God intended for you to be, then you can have an influence on those in your periphery, those around you, your family, your friends, your work ethics, whatever. Your influence is important. And we started a study last week on being a spiritual influencer. I talked to you about cosmic influencers and social media influencers, and I told you how all of that is a big thing today and how much money they make by being social media influencers. People on Facebook, people on Instagram, things like that, make a big fortune doing these sort of things. And so I want to ask you today to listen in very carefully and as we talk about being a spiritual influencer. And if you’re ready, we’re gonna jump into it here. Spiritual influencer not being a role model. It’s not interested in you being a role model. The Bible talks about the role model is the Lord Jesus Christ. And that’s who we are to model our life after. In 1 Peter 2, 21, for this you have been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you might follow in his steps. And he committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. So leaving us an example, our spiritual role model. He was our influencer. And hopefully we’ve learned what it means to be a member of the pivot. I talked about that last week, that core group of mature believers who are able to sustain a nation, deliver the nation. But the greatest group of influencers that you and I know about are a bunch of people that went from being commoners to criminals. That’s those disciples, and the influence they had is unbelievable. They never knew they were going to write the New Testament. They had no clue about that. But our Lord Jesus Christ warned them, if you’re going to follow me, there will be conflict coming with it. And I’d like to warn you too, if you’re going to grow spiritually, if you want to follow the claims of the Lord Jesus Christ, there will be conflict. Let me remind you what Matthew 10, 34 said, do not think I came to bring peace on the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother and mother A daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law and a man’s enemy shall be those of his own household. So your children might reject your wisdom as they get sucked into the lies of the cosmic system if, in fact, they have no biblical wisdom. then they can have no insight, no discernment, no ability to determine the lie from the truth. As a matter of fact, the older you get, the dumber they think you are. And so you must understand God left you here for a reason. And I believe this thoroughly. You can be an influencer in our generation. The influencer. And I want to go to the Bible to John chapter four to show you an influencer. Actually, it’s a woman. And here’s some principles. Principle number one from John chapter four, verses five through verses 30. The influencer of the Sumerian woman. One amazing woman was an influence to a whole city. Here’s the principle. God can use, number one, anybody. God can use anybody. I don’t know you personally. Some of you I do. I’ve talked to you on the phone. I’ve written letters to you. We’ve corresponded. But God can use you, even a loose lady like the woman in John chapter four. Number two, this is very critical that you understand this. Your past does not define your future. Your past does not define your future. Whatever happened to this woman in the past was not an issue. What was going to happen in the future was the issue. And the Lord used her to bring a whole city to him. Number three, effective witnessing has an appeal, and people take note and people listen. And they listened to this lady. She was not trashy. She might have had a bad judge of character when it came to men, but she was not a liar. She was not a thief. She was not a prostitute. She just couldn’t stay married. And when she went to tell what had happened, they listened. And so finally, get this down, remember this, if you’re a female, God used a woman to turn around the history of an entire town. One amazing woman brought a city to the Lord Jesus Christ. In my life and ministry, I could not do what I do without some amazing women behind me. Women that helped me do phenomenal things like editing and answering letters and sending out mail and secretarial work and praying for me consistently across the country. Hundreds of women that I know pray for me. That’s obvious that I can’t do what I do without those women. And so let’s look at this woman here. In John 4, verse 5, Jesus came to the city of Samaria and stopped at Jacob’s well to quench his thirst. And a woman of Samaria came to draw water from the well, and Jesus asked her for a drink. Now, the disciples hadn’t gone ahead. They were going in to secure lodging and food. And so the Lord Jesus Christ is sitting at Jacob’s well, and this woman comes up. he asked her to give him a drink verse 7 a woman of samaria came to draw water from the well and jesus asked her for a drink here’s what it says jesus said to her give me to drink verse 9 the woman questioned him in john chapter 4 about his motives She was taken back a bit, and she said, how is it that you, being a Jew, would ask a Samaritan for a drink? You must understand that the Jews hated the Samaritan. They would go out of their way to avoid a Samaritan. They were racially prejudiced against these Samaritans. And here it is, the Lord Jesus Christ asking the Samaritan woman for a drink, and she’s stunned by this. And Jesus offered a proposition to this woman in verse 10 after she said in verse nine, how is it that you being a Jew would ask a Samaritan for a drink? In verse 10, the Lord Jesus Christ said, if you knew who I am, You would ask me for some living water. She missed the hint. She said in verse 11 and 12, are you greater than our father Jacob? And again, he spoke about the water he had to offer. He said, listen, if you drink of the water I give you, you will never thirst again. This is a metaphor for eternal life. But she’s still missing the message. She still thinks it’s physical water. And so in verse 15 of John chapter four, she said, well, if that’s true and I would never need another drink, then give me some of that water so I won’t have to keep coming back to this goofy well. And then the Lord Jesus Christ changed tactics with her and got very personal. This is something you need to remember if you’re going to influence anyone’s life. Look for an opportunity to talk about personal issues, not condemning them, not slandering them, not judging them, but appealing to their heart where the issues are the lord jesus christ changed his tactics and he got personal and you know what he said to her he said to her in verses 16 through 18 go fetch your husband well now he’s gone to meddling to get her attention and he has her attention in verse 19 she said sir you must be a prophet and she changed the narrative now to religion And she said, our fathers worshiped in this mountain, but you claim we have to go worship in Jerusalem. And then the Lord educated her and told her this. He explained that true worship of the Father must be done in spirit and in truth. Chapter four, verses 21 through 24. Very misunderstood doctrine, the doctrine of worship. Very misunderstood in my opinion. People don’t understand what it means to worship. here’s our woman she’s been nailed by the lord jesus christ for having many husbands the one she lives with now is not even her husband and he nails her about that and then we get into religion and now she’s trying to get out of this thing and now he goes on to educate her and explaining if you want to worship god you must do it in spirit and in truth and this is true for you too If you are not filled with the Holy Spirit, you cannot worship God. If you don’t go through the Bible, which is the truth, you cannot worship God. If you don’t believe in Jesus Christ, who said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, you cannot worship God. Truth must be understood. And the Holy Spirit opens your eyes to truth. That’s what Jesus Christ said. I’m going to leave you a mentor, a comforter. He will guide you into truth. He will lead you into truth. It may be why you’re listening to this radio show today. Maybe the Holy Spirit led you to listen to me. Maybe you’re learning and growing for the first time in your life spiritually. I hope so. But in regards to worship, In 1 Corinthians 14, 26, Paul wrote, when you assemble, let all things be done for edification, to build up for spiritual growth. Edification. Edification is a word in the Greek New Testament pronounced akotome, akotome, O-I-K-O-D-O-M-E, akotome, long E on the end of it. And what this means is there are numerous ways in which we worship God, but they must all relate to our spiritual growth. means to build up for spiritual growth. That’s what it means, to build up, to build a house in your soul for spiritual growth. And when you accept Christ as your Savior, you go from being a baby Christian to a mature Christian. So metaphorically, you’re building a house within your soul, and you’re putting furniture in that house with the biblical doctrines that you learned. And so this is one of the ways that we grow. Everything in assembly worship, when you come together, should be done with a view towards or an objective towards edification, spiritual growth. It’s the objective of worship. It’s to communicate Bible doctrine. to communicate the Word of God so that you can grow spiritually and be edified and thus represent Jesus Christ to those in your periphery as a spiritual influencer. I heard recently of a church service that someone went to where it was about 30 minutes of praise and worship, about five minutes of worship, a sermon from the preacher and another 30 minutes of asking for money two or three times. That’s not worship. Ritual is one of the easiest ways of adding works to your salvation because it usually provides in some sort of beautiful setting like an auditorium or a church Well, you don’t have to think. You don’t have to do anything. You just sit there and enjoy the show. That’s ritual without reality. It’s non-thinking, and that’s not worshiping. That’s not what worshiping is at all. Ritual without reality is non-thinking person’s worship. It is not true worship at all. When you take communion, do you know Jesus said, this do in remembrance of me. That’s worship, remembering me. That’s thinking. Communion requires you to think. Think about the doctrines that what the bread represents and what the cup represents. And so if we go back to that, he explained to this woman, if you’re going to worship the Father, you must do it in spirit and in truth. And now she wants to try to educate the Lord Jesus Christ with her knowledge of what she knows about prophecy. So in chapter 4, verse 25, she said, I know the Messiah is coming. In verse 26, the Lord Jesus Christ looked at her right dead in the eye and said these words, I that speak to you am he. Wow, he identified who he was to that woman. He looked her in the eye and said, I am the Messiah lady. And now she’s really freaking out. But about this time, the disciples come back and try to run her away. They try to dismiss the woman. This woman went back in verse 28 of chapter four and became an influencer and led many people in her town to the Savior. Would you like to hear it? So the woman left her water pot, the one that Jesus had asked her for a drink. She was in a hurry and she went back to the town to tell them what she’d learned. And the Bible says from that city, many of the Samaritans believed in him because of the word of the woman who testified and told me all the things that I had done. He, Jesus, stayed there two more days, and many believed in his word. And you know what they told that woman? Here’s what they said to her. It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we heard it for ourselves, and we know that this one is indeed the savior of the world. Now, she had an influence. They didn’t disregard her. They knew she wasn’t a cheat, a thief, a loose woman. She just had bad luck in marriage. But they took notice when she came back and said, I have found the Messiah. He’s at Jacob’s well, and they all went out to meet him. You know, she was stunned when the Lord revealed her private personal life because he knew it. He knew everything about her, and she had never met him before. How could he know she’d been married that many times? And then so she left her water pot in a hurry to run tell who? Who is she going to tell? Her friends, those with whom she associated with. She didn’t run to the religious leaders, I promise you that. That was not her field of influence. They wanted nothing to do with her. They probably wouldn’t even let her join the church because of all of her many marriages. And so she took off to go back and talk to her friends. All right. It was through the influence of this woman who did not have a lot of virtue, that hundreds were saved. And her social platform was her word of mouth. So look to her eyes, look at the urgency in her voice. She proclaimed that Jesus Christ was the Messiah. And they could see she was telling the truth. What a lady, what a woman, what an influencer. And you can influence with the same impact in your own periphery. If you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, people can tell. They can tell from the sincerity of your voice, from the sincerity of your look, that you have found the Messiah and he has set you free. There’s also another influencer in that book of John called John the Baptist. Apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, John the Baptist was probably the most theological significant person in those four books of the gospel, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And as was the case with Jesus, his birth was meticulously recorded in the Bible. In Luke 1, 5 through 25, Gabriel appears to Zacharias in the temple and told him, that Elizabeth, his wife, was going to have a child, but old Zach questioned Gabriel, and thus for questioning Gabriel, he was struck dumb, unable to speak, until John was actually born. And then when he was born, his entrance into the world was marked by an angelic proclamation and divine intervention in Luke 1, 57 through 80. But John is clearly a pivotal figure in the salvation history of God. What an influencer John was. a simple Jewish itinerant preacher traveling from place to place with a message of this, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, the announcer of the Messiah. Did you know he was beheaded by Herod Antipasus? And when Jesus came around, Herod Antipasus thought John had been raised from the dead, Matthew 14, 1 through 12. But through his formative years, He lived in obscurity in the desert, Luke 1.80. And his public ministry nearly ended, his public ministry ended nearly 400 years of prophetic silence. So for 400 years, nothing much had been said about the Messiah. Nothing much had come forth. And now all of a sudden, God is speaking to his people again through John the Baptist. John was the voice crying in the wilderness. preparing the way for the coming Messiah. Isaiah 40, verse 3 tells us that. Matthew 3, 3, Mark 1, 2, and 3, Luke 3, 3, and 6. God needed a voice, and God needs your voice. Not your voice commenting on politics, not your voice commenting on anything but on spreading the gospel. The central theme of John’s ministry was this, repent for the kingdom of heaven is near. There are several words for repent in the Bible, metanoia, metanoeo, and metamelomai. These are three different Greek words, metanoia, metanoeo, and metamelomai. And the all three mean something different. To repent does not mean to feel sorry. It means to change your mind, to change the way you think. That’s why the Bible says you’ve been an unbeliever, you become a believer. Now you think like he is the Lord Jesus Christ. In the past, you did not think that way. You were an unbeliever. Now you’re a believer. Getting saved is thinking. It’s thinking that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and believing that and accepting the forgiveness that he offers to you. That’s what you have to ask yourself. Do I believe that Jesus is the anointed Son of God? Because if he is, then you must put your faith and trust in him if you hope to have eternal life. So that’s John’s message. He was a person who talked about repenting changing your mind he was called the Baptist because his practice was to baptize anybody who responded to the message and proclaimed that he proclaimed and sincerely repented of their sins now they had not met Jesus Christ yet but they believed in who he was and that he was coming and they were ready they wanted to be saved they wanted to accept the Messiah and finally even though John was merely a witness serving a transitional figure The impact of his life and the impact of his ministry should never be underestimated. And it’s the same with you. As you get older and as you approach the time of departure from this planet, you must have an impact. You must leave an impact. You must have a spiritual impact, a spiritual heritage. You might be an invisible hero, but you must have an impact. and you cannot have that impact apart from the wisdom of god in your soul being filled with the holy spirit and being an effective witness for the lord jesus christ that’s what god is counting on in your life during john’s lifetime he had following of disciples who shared common practices with him like fasting and and prayer matthew 9 14 john 1 35 John’s disciples even survived his death and spread throughout the Mediterranean world. One of them might have been Apollos. He was from Alexandria in North Africa, and at one point, he only knew about the baptism of John, Acts 18.24. But upon arrival in Ephesus, Paul encountered dozens of John’s disciples. They too had experienced John’s baptism, but they didn’t know very much about the resurrection. John didn’t have a social platform. He wasn’t out to socially change the world. He was only out to give the truth of God’s promise. The Messiah is coming. The Redeemer can forgive you for your sin. And he inaugurated a spiritual movement that had influence long after his death and extended throughout the mediterranean world and even extends to the united states of america today he prepared the people for the coming of the messiah you and i have been prepared for days just like this since the day that god saved you he’s been preparing you giving you the truth giving you his word so that you can have an influence And God will use your voice as a witness as long as you know and understand the truth. You don’t tell people in order to be saved, you have to quit smoking, quit drinking, quit cussing, quit going to R-rated movies. That’s not it. The Bible says, for by grace are you saved through faith. It’s a gift of God, not of works. If you will simply lift up the person and the work of Christ and what he did on the cross and how he redeemed us out of the slave market of sin, how he reconciled our relationship with God. That’s the influence. And you can be that sort of influencer in your life. Your influence in society is mandated in the scripture. And you must be prepared to do it because an encounter with a savior leaves a burning desire to tell somebody about it. I remember in my life when I got saved, I couldn’t wait to tell other people about it. That’s exactly what happened in the New Testament when Philip found Nathanael and said, we found Jesus. We found the one Moses spoke about, the prophets wrote about, Jesus, the son of Joseph. An encounter with a savior leaves a burning desire to tell somebody. Usually you tell your best friend first and try to influence them. How many of you told your friends about the influence of the Lord Jesus Christ in your life or the influence of learning the word like you’re doing now? Never learned this much before, you say. I’ve never understood it like that. Have you told somebody? The influencer must be prepared to face rejection because it’ll happen. You must be aware and use your platform to keep informed. Keep in mind this, that all believers are not on the same page. They’re not on the same team. They may have the same Bible, the same playbook, But they may have a different coach, a different pastor that teaches something that’s not necessarily what you believe. So you’ll have to figure that out. You’ll have to come to grips with that in your own soul. But your influence in society is mandated in the Bible. It’s mandated. You shall receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses unto me. That’s your job, to lift up the Lord Jesus Christ. The filling of the Holy Spirit and the gospel message combine to give you life-changing benefits for yourself and for others. What do we do with our assets? What do we do with them? Well, in 2 Corinthians 5, now all of these things are from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. namely that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed to us the word of reconciliation. That’s your ministry. Therefore, the Bible says we are ambassadors for Christ as though God was making an appeal through us We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. That’s your ministry. That’s your spear of influence. That’s what God expects out of you. And that’s what I’m challenging you with this morning, to be an influencer in God’s plan in your life. You are God’s personal representative of the Lord Jesus Christ during your time on this earth. He entrusted you with his plan, his plan for all mankind, which was redemption, Your mission is not political, but it’s personal. You are to lead people to the Savior. Give them the word. Step back. Let the Holy Spirit do the job. Boy, I hope you’re listening. I hope you’re learning. I hope you’ll apply it into your life. On Tech Next Week, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Floodline.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thank you for listening to The Floodline with your host, Rick Hughes. If you’d like to contact Rick, please write to him at P.O. Box 100, Cropwell, Alabama, 35054, or online at www.rickhughesministries.org.
