SPEAKER 01 : 0:08

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.

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good morning and welcome to the flot line flot f-l-o-t it stands for the forward line of troops it’s a military analogy we’re talking about building a main line of resistance inside your soul based on god’s word 10 unique problem solving devices that can stop the outside sources of adversity before they ever become the inside source of stress because you all know adversity is inevitable But you may not know that stress is optional. So God has some unique problem-solving devices, which we call the FLOT line, Forward Line of Troops. And this show deals with those 10 unique problem-solving devices, dealing with rebound, the filling of the Holy Spirit, the faith thrust drill, grace orientation, biblical orientation, personal sense of destiny, personal love for God, impersonal love for all of mankind, sharing the happiness of God. and occupation with Christ. I ran through all 10 of them quickly there. We’ve taught them consistently on this radio show, and we will teach them again. If you don’t understand what they are, write to me, and we’ll send you a free book called Christian Problem Solving. Get it in the mail to you, ASAP. It won’t cost you a dime, and you can read and study about each one of these problem-solving devices. Our show is about giving you information, not trying to solicit money. We’re not trying to hustle you. We’re trying to help you verify and identify the plan of God for your life. If you’re not a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you’ve never trusted him as your savior, you’re living in very perilous times because that’s the dumbest decision anybody could ever make to reject Christ as their savior. The smartest decision you could ever make is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, as the Bible says, and you will be saved. And I hope you will do that. I hope you’ll make that decision to trust in Christ. Maybe you’re a believer. Maybe you’ve already done that. I hear from people every day by means of these 113 radio stations we broadcast on. Every Sunday morning, I hear from people telling me, I’m a Christian. I’ve accepted Christ as my Savior, but I’ve never really learned how to live the Christian life, and you’re helping me. You’re teaching me, you’re showing me the information I need to know. That’s my job, to show you basic Bible doctrine and get you under a well-qualified pastor where you can grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Now I want to talk to you about something very interesting today. This is kind of some in-depth message as we go into the new year. I want to talk to you about the devil’s delusion. The devil’s delusion. With this new year, it’s coming up. You know, a lot of us are going to promise to do better. You know, we’re going to give up certain things. We’re going to be more healthy, no more cook, no more, no more Coke, Coke’s and cakes and candies and all of that. We’re going to join the gym. I had a friend of mine said, I go to the gym every day. I said, no, you don’t. He said, yes, I do. I named my bathroom, the gym. So, uh, and I’m talking about the real gym. Go and join the gym, start exercising, you know, et cetera. All these are good and noble thoughts, but, you know, seldom are they adhered to. Doing good, you know, doing good, that’s a basic human virtue, and we all, you know, try to live by the Ten Commandments, don’t you? Treat people fairly, help the poor, help the homeless, do all those noble things. However, however, listen carefully. God’s idea of good And man’s idea of good are two totally different things. For example, the big idea that Satan wants you to do bad things is not necessarily true. He is indeed the author of organized religion, and that’s a human good scheme to get to heaven. And that is truly the most evil thing on this earth, organized religion. Because organized religion wants you to be morally good, be a good person, And maybe you’ll get to heaven, and that’s not true. With God, it doesn’t impress him. Good people do not impress God. Did you know that? The Bible says in Romans 3.10, there are none that are good, no, not one. So just because you’re a Boy Scout and help little old ladies across the street and you don’t smoke and you don’t drink and you don’t cuss and you don’t cheat on your taxes, you don’t cheat on your spouse, that does not mean you’re going to heaven. There’s only one way to heaven. Christ said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man will ever come to the Father but by means of me. So you’re not going to be good enough to impress a perfectly righteous God. And besides that, you know, talking about Satan, what he wants you to do, most of the really bad things we do, the sins we do, actually they originate from your own sin nature or sometimes from the lure of the world, which is what I call the call of the wild. In 1 John 2.15, the Bible says, Do not love the world. Do not love anything in the world, because if you love the world, then the love of the Father is not in you. So your spiritual life, if you’re a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, can be very easily sidetracked, very easily get off course by allowing the flesh or the world to drag you into their control. Because both the world and the flesh are capable of doing good things that are not compatible with God’s plan. Things like asceticism. I don’t know if you know what that is or not, but that’s extreme self-denial, doing away with all sorts of things. Avoidance of indulgence. Or maybe it’s charity to feed the masses throughout the world. These are all good deeds, good deeds of the flesh or good deeds of the world, and they may appeal to your emotions. You may feel like you’re doing something good, but that’s not what’s defined in the Bible as divine good. The devil’s delusion is very crafty here. When our Lord Jesus Christ said Satan is a liar and the father of lies, he was referring to the devil’s claims of innocence by attempting to discredit the claim of Christ as Lord. Satan doesn’t want to go to the lake of fire. He knows it’s real. He knows where it is. He knows he’s been condemned to go to the lake of fire and he would like to vindicate himself. And that’s part of the reason you’re here, sort of like an appeal trial. And if he can get you to do good and to bring about some perfect utopia on the earth and everybody love everybody, then he can say, well, look, God, look what I’ve done. I’m not a bad person. So organized religion preaches you to do good as a way to gain favor with God and gain favor with man, obviously, but let’s take a look at those ideas. What is truly divine good and what is the devil’s delusion? Can I share some notes that I took years ago? My pastor that passed away, he pastored from 1950 to 2003, was R.B. Thiem, Jr. at Baraka Church in Houston, Texas. This is where I learned a lot of biblical information. I want to give you some of his notes that I took on divine good and human good, and let’s listen up carefully. Here’s the first one. Don’t confuse human good with morality. or the legitimate production of the believer. God wants you to be moral, yes, and it’s not a sin to be moral, but you won’t go to heaven just because you don’t fornicate. You won’t go to heaven just because you don’t get drunk. I’m glad if you are a very moral person, but sometimes those sort of people get into self-righteousness, and they’ll look at someone else and say, well, I would have never done that. I wouldn’t do that. Well, obviously not. That’s not your area of weakness. Different people have different areas of weakness. So don’t confuse human good with morality and the legitimate function of the believer. Human good is what a believer can do if he’s out of fellowship with God operating in the devil’s cosmic system. If you’re a Christian and you’ve been saved, you can produce either divine good, which is rewardable, or human good, which will be burned up at the judgment seat of Christ. We’ll get to that. But human good is not valid in God’s eyes. It’s not valid because it is production of the flesh. It’s the production of evil. It’s the counterfeit of the original. And this is what Satan is good at. In organized religion, he counterfeits the original. You know, the Bible says, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. What would the devil tell you? Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and give up Coca-Colas and you’ll be saved. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and don’t drink any more beer and you’ll be saved. That’s not true. That’s good. That’s you trying to earn your way into God’s favor by giving up something. That never works, but that’s what organized religion will tell you to do. Please don’t buy into that. Human good is characterized by some sort of fanaticism often. You know, that’s sort of an arrogant concentration on some person or some subject, making you the ultimate do-gooder. You know, I’m going to straighten the world out. Fanatics. Fanatics produce all sorts of human good by protesting against whatever they disapprove of. could be the environment, they don’t like what’s going on and so they say the world’s heating up and the world’s gonna melt and we gotta get on the environmental train. Listen, the Bible tells you how the world will end. If you’re interested, read 2 Peter. The Bible clearly lays it out and we’re not gonna destroy this planet. Man does not have the capability to destroy this planet. But some environmentalists may get on some good kick and say, well, if we could just get this under control, then the world would be a much safer place and we’ll all be okay. And maybe an animal rights activist or racial injustice or abortion rights, whatever. If all these people had their way, the world would still have problems. And it’s because man has a sinful condition. We all have a sin nature, and you cannot eradicate the sin nature. I don’t care who you put in control. I don’t care who you elect as president, who’s the king. He has a sinful nature. So the one thing that can actually change the heart of a man, the one thing that could actually make things better, is protested against, protested by people that don’t like religion, such as the Freedom From Religion Foundation, because they consider religion Religion is a bad thing, and they consider they’re doing a good thing by protecting the atheist. And that’s the one thing that could actually change the world. If someone believes in the Lord Jesus Christ and accepts him as their Savior, the Bible says he’d be a new creation. Old things are passed away and all things become new. So why would they fight that? Why would they want to stop what would change a man’s heart? these are human good efforts that do not impress god and the world is full of this do-gooder self-righteousness arrogant concentration of the do-gooder there there are about two or three different classifications of human good and let me try to explain it to you when you if you’re a believer and you have sin in your life you have unconfessed sin in your life Maybe you’ve lied, didn’t deal with it. Maybe you’ve cheated, didn’t deal with it. Maybe you’ve been unfaithful, didn’t deal with it. But yet, for example, you go to church and you put money in the offering plate, you sing in the choir, you went to Sunday school. That’s human good. That’s good deeds you produce from the energy of the flesh under the sin nature, not from the filling of the Holy Spirit. So when you’re out of fellowship, you’re in the cosmic system. And if you’re in the cosmic system, you’re not in the spiritual life. You’re carnal, not spiritual. And any good deeds you do while you’re out of fellowship with God is called human good and it will be destroyed at the judgment seat of christ jesus christ our savior our lord didn’t die for human good he died for sin he paid for our sin so human good has to be judged and it will be judged at the judgment seat of christ for the believer there’s also a type of human good that’s an establishment good And, you know, like joining the military and protecting and serving their country. That’s a good thing. That’s okay. But you’re not going to go to heaven because you joined the Marine Corps. You’re not going to go to heaven because you were in the Army, the Air Force, the Coast Guard, the Navy. You go to heaven because you believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. But it’s a good thing. Establishment, orientation, serving your country, protecting and serving your nation. And then there’s the human good of the unbeliever, the disadvantaged person. And this is all registered in the Book of Works in Revelation. We’ll talk about that shortly. And this is what organized religion produces, which is a form of ritual without any reality to it. Ritual without reality is meaningless. So when I’m talking about human good as opposed to divine good, I’m talking about a reference to anything that’s produced by you apart from the grace provisions given by God. And let me tell you two of them, and they’re part of the 10 problem-solving devices. The filling of the Holy Spirit and Operation Z. Operation Z, I will explain. The filling of the Holy Spirit is what you get when you rebound from your sin. When you confess your sin, you’re filled with the Holy Spirit. The moment you believed in Christ, you’re indwelled by the Holy Spirit. You’re sealed with the Holy Spirit. You’re filled with the Holy Spirit. You’re given your spiritual gift. You’re regenerated. But you can quench the Holy Spirit and grieve the Holy Spirit by sinning. Mental attitude sins, sins of the tongue, even overt sins. And when you commit those sins, then you are out of fellowship. And if you don’t use the first problem-solving device called Rebound, 1 John 1, 9, if we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That means he’ll do it every time you go to him. Every time you go to your Heavenly Father and admit your sin, he will cleanse you from it. And this doesn’t give you a license to do it over and over and over again. It’s just giving you a way to get back in fellowship with God before you fall under divine discipline. So any human good is what you produce while you’re not filled with the Holy Spirit, even though you might have been at church, you might have been giving money, you might have been singing in the choir, you might have been at Christmas caroling. Good, good, all good. But human good, not produced by the filling of the Holy Spirit. But when you’re filled with the Holy Spirit, those same deeds that you did, sing in the choir, give money to your church, go visit the sick and the poor, that’s rewardable. That’s divine good, and that’s a wonderful thing. So God’s grace provisions are the filling of the Holy Spirit and Operation Z. Operation Z is you being fed the Word of God by your pastor. communicator communicates it to you the holy spirit helps you to comprehend it and you capture that information and you comply with that information anything god provides in grace and it’s all grace given to you it’s all free it’s there anything god provides in grace for production of spiritual life that can be divine good so human good And divine good are antithetically, mutually exclusive, totally different. They are not the same. Human good originates inside the cosmic system, the devil’s world. Human good is dead works, dead works, Hebrews 6.1. So if you’re a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and you get out of fellowship and you Maybe you justify why it’s okay to do something. Remember, arrogance always has three steps to it. Self-justification, self-deception, self-absorption. So you’re arrogant. You sin. You don’t obey God. You don’t listen to God. And then you get out and you start doing some sort of Christian service. That’s dead, dead. Human good works dead. All of your production while you were in that cosmic system of carnality is dead, and you will never be rewarded for it, and you will never advance spiritually until you learn what human good is. So human good produced from the cosmic system is never acceptable to God, never. Isaiah 64, six says, all of our righteous deeds are like a filthy rag. If you can imagine the nastiest, dirtiest, filthiest thing that you can imagine laying on the floor, That filthy rag is equivalent to your good deeds. And the person in the cosmic system cannot manufacture any clean deeds. It’s totally unrighteous. All of us, the Bible says, those in the cosmic system, wither like a leaf and our perversities are like the wind and they blow us away. So you can give up trying to impress God because you don’t smoke. You can give up trying to impress God because you don’t drink. You can give up trying to impress God because you don’t say dirty words. You want to impress God? Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Take God’s word, learn it, and use it, and you will have the most unbelievable, fantastic life of happiness. that the world has ever known because Jesus said it himself, happiness belongs to those people who hear my Father’s word and to keep it. So human good will not provide salvation for you. It will not do it. Titus 3.5, not by works of righteousness which we have done. This is what the person in the cosmic system believes. And that’s called the devil’s delusion. And the devil’s delusion contends that faith is not enough for your salvation. And there are whole denominations built on this. living your life inside the cosmic system and performing good deeds. 2 Timothy 1.9, not according to our good deeds, but according to his predetermined plan, even grace. So yes, I want you to be good. I do not want you to be immoral. I do not want you to sin. but I want you to produce divine good from the filling of the Holy Spirit. That’s why it’s necessary for you to understand the protocol plan of God. So you don’t get to heaven and think you got a lot of rewards waiting on you, and wham, you wind up having this big bonfire with everybody watching, And all of your good deeds are burned up, 1 Corinthians 3. You can read about it yourself. Some is wood, hay, and stubble. Some is gold, silver, and precious stones. The foundation is there that your faith alone, in Christ alone, but all of that human good, all the good things you did while you were out of fellowship, While you had unconfessed sin in your life, those will be destroyed. They did not glorify God. Why? Because they were produced in the energy of the flesh. Even lost people can do good things. Just because you did something good does not mean God is impressed. So this is what the devil’s delusion is. He deludes people in regards to faith. He deludes people in regards to the Christian life. He makes you think you’re a good Christian because you don’t drink or dance or smoke. When I first got saved, I had people try to mold me into being what they considered to be a good Christian. And you cannot believe some of the things I was told I shouldn’t do. As a matter of fact, I soon found myself saying, well, the only thing I can do since I’m now saved is go sing in the choir and go bowling. And I don’t sing and I don’t bowl, so I was in trouble. What can you do if you’re a Christian? Can you have fun? Can you laugh? Can you go to a movie? What can you do? Well, you need to understand what the Bible teaches is sin, and then you’ll be freed up from a lot of that self-righteous legalism that people try to manipulate you with. So the devil’s delusion will contend that faith is not enough for salvation, that you have to do something else. And, you know, like what else? Well, how about being baptized? You got to get baptized. If you’re not baptized, you’re not saved. That’s not what the Bible says. And I know people get mad about this one. Paul said, God did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, and not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should have been made of none effect. And he said, I thank God I baptized none of you, except Crispus and Gaius and the household of Stephanas. If there were any others, I don’t even remember who they could have been. But he said, the word of God, the power of the gospel is found in the word of God. That’s the power of the gospel. Romans 1.16, not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, because it is the power of God unto salvation. The good news, that’s what gets a person saved. Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the anointed son of God? Because the Bible says, he that believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. And he that believes not, the wrath of God abides on him already. It didn’t say believe and give up coke. It didn’t say believe and get baptized. It didn’t say believe and do anything. It said believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Is he or is he not who he said he was? If he is, then go to the Father in prayer and tell him, I believe that Jesus Christ is your son, and I’m willing to accept him as my Savior. That’s the prayer of salvation, and that’s the prayer that God will honor. Now, all of this human good we’re talking about, all this good stuff, it will be judged. It will be taken care of in the future. If you are a member of the church, the body of Christ, and you are if you’re listening to me and you’re saved, then your judgment will be at the end of the church age at what’s called the judgment seat of Christ. And this is where 1 Corinthians 3, it talks about the wood, hay, and stubble. In Romans 14, 10, we must all stand before God’s judgment seat. Now, he’s not going to pull up your sins. Let’s get that straight. Don’t think there’s going to be a movie projector. Everybody have a seat, and let’s watch Rick. We’re going to see where all the sins Rick did. Here’s some popcorn. Have a Coke, soda, and watch Rick fail. No. All of my sins, all of your sins were paid for on the cross. That’s not even the issue. The issue is our good deeds, whether or not that’s acceptable to God. And we will stand before the judgment seat of Christ and give an account. In 2 Corinthians 5.10, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one of us may receive what is due us for the things that are done. That’s rewards, whether in the body, whether good or bad. So the believer’s human good is evaluated, burned up, done away with, judged. Now, if you’re an unbeliever, at the end of the millennium, the great white throne is where unbeliever’s sin is not an issue either. It’s his human good. First of all, his name in the Lamb’s Book of Life. No, it’s not. Revelation 20, verse 12 through 15. No, his name’s not in the Lamb’s Book of Life. He died without accepting Christ. Well, what about the book of works? What about all of his good works? Can they measure up to God’s righteousness? And the answer is no. Revelation 20, 12 through 15. So any sort of good the unbeliever does establishes no credit with God. No credit with God for the unbeliever at the great white throne judgment. And the Bible says, many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did I not prophesy in your name? And didn’t I do many wonderful things, good works? He’ll tell them I never knew you. Because that’s all totally divorced from the integrity of God. It doesn’t accomplish what it seeks to accomplish. And it never fulfills the objective of improving anything. You cannot, you cannot clean up the devil’s world. does not impress God, you’re trying to clean up the devil’s world. So any Christian service, any work apart from the filling of the Holy Spirit can be nothing but human good. It’s the enemy of your modus operandi in your life. So don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. We should help the needy. We should feed the poor, but it must be done under the filling of the Holy Spirit to be rewardable. Even a housewife washing dishes can produce divine good if she serves God in her capacity and in her sphere of influence. So here’s the bottom line. Human good is no good in God’s eyes. Divine good brings glory to God and is redeemable and rewardable to his children. The devil’s delusion is that by being good, you will get to God, and that if we would all be good, the world would be a much better place. That’s a lie. There’s never a shortage of those who are willing to tell you what’s good and what’s bad. You know what I’m talking about. So they’re always there saying, no, that’s bad. Okay, that’s good. You can do that. You can’t do that. Stay away from those people. Divine good production under the filling of the Holy Spirit is one of the most overlooked doctrines in the Bible. Thus confusion, misunderstanding allows Satan to foster his programs in the cosmic system while he seeks to vindicate himself and his actions in eternity past. He doesn’t want to go to the lake of fire, and he’s trying to use you to vindicate himself, trying to use you to get away with being judged. But the sentence has been passed. He is destined to go there. And regardless of what you do, it’s not going to change things. But he’s trying, and he’ll use you to try to get away with it. So think about these things. Clarify in your mind the difference between divine good and human good. The next time you go to church, the next time you put money in the offering, the next time you sing in the choir, make sure you’re filled with the Holy Spirit and not doing it in the energy of the flesh, or it’s nothing but human good. Until next week, I’m your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you. Thank you for listening to The Flatline.

SPEAKER 01 : 27:17

Thank you for listening to The Flatline 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.