Join Rick Hughes as he explores the intricate concepts of God’s character and how Christians are called to understand and represent Him accurately. Through biblical scripture, Hughes stresses the importance of acknowledging God’s eternally gracious and merciful qualities. The episode is packed with examples from the Bible, including Moses’ mistake at Meribah, which serves as a crucial reminder of the importance of following God’s protocol. Listeners will discover the crucial role of the Holy Spirit in the Christian journey and the necessity of confessing sins to ensure a genuine connection with God.
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 good morning and welcome to the flatline i’m your host rick hughes and for the next few minutes please stick around you know the drill 30 minutes of motivation some inspiration a whole lot of education
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and absolutely no manipulation. We don’t con people. We’re not trying to hustle money. We’re not trying to sell you anything. We’re not trying to ask you to join anything. What I would like to ask is for you to listen. Listen as I try to verify and identify God’s plan for your life. If I’m able to do that, then my prayer is you’ll be able to orient and adjust to the plan. So thank you for listening to The Flatline. This is show 941 Sundays that we’ve been on the air. 115 cities across America. We appreciate your calls. Thank you for your prayers. It’s always an encouragement to hear from those that say we are listening. I’m grateful for that. Let me remind you, we have a couple of new books coming out really, really soon, maybe out already when this show plays. One of them is called A Book on Aging, God’s Grace as We Age, what you can understand about that. And also another book we’ve got out called These Things, and it spans off of John 15, 11, where our Lord Jesus Christ said, I told you these things so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be full. So we took a look at what these things actually are from John 13 to John 15. I think you’ll enjoy both books and they are free of charge as we’ve said. Just contact us at Rick Hughes Ministries, P.O. Box 100, Cropwell, Alabama, 35054. Or you can call 800-831-0718. Thank you for your prayer support. And we’ll move on this morning. We want to talk about God’s rules of order. God’s rules of order. A lot of people that listen are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. And I want you to understand this. I believe personally that the person of God is a misunderstood subject in the Christian world today. Now, of course, the agnostic doesn’t even believe in God. He doesn’t even believe God actually exists. But that’s his problem, and good luck trying to explain how he came to that decision without using blind faith anyhow, since it can’t prove their case. I remember one time a fellow talking about that said he was an atheist. And we said, well, you don’t believe God exists? No. You haven’t seen him anywhere on earth and God’s not here? And I said, well, the other guy that I heard present this argument and said, well, what about on the moon? What if God’s on the moon? And of course, the atheist said, well, he’s not on the moon. A rocket ship went up there and nobody saw him. He’s not on the moon. And the other fellow said, well, maybe he was on Mars when they were on the moon. And he said, well, we sent a rocket ship to Mars and it went around and took pictures and no God there and The other guy said, well, maybe he’s on Pluto. You’re on Mars and not on the moon. See, it’s ridiculous. The argument is this. In order to say there is no God and be defensible about it, you’ve got to be God yourself and look everywhere in the universe at one time because if you leave one place out and God is there, you’re a cooked goose. So what you say is, I believe there is no God. You can’t prove it. You have faith, there is no God. And the same thing the Christian does. He has faith that Jesus Christ is the anointed son of God. Isn’t that interesting? So but for those of you that are listening that have entered into God’s royal family, by trusting in the finished work of Christ on the cross, you now have a relationship with the God of this universe, which you must understand. If you want to glorify him to the max, you must understand your relationship. And that’s why we harp on that on this show. We push that. We understand he has eminence, I-M-M-A-N-E-N-C-E, eminence and transcendence. Two big words. God is eminence and transcendence. What does that mean? That means he’s omnipresent. and he exists beyond the limits of time and space. Jeremiah 23, listen to what the Bible says here. Jeremiah wrote, am I a God near at hand, says the Lord, and not a God afar off? Can anyone hide himself in secret places so I shall not see him, says the Lord? Do I not fill heaven and earth, says the Lord? Yes, he’s omnipresent. That means that God is able to be with you and with me at the same time. God is able to be in Europe and in America at the same time. And I get frustrated when I hear preachers preach sermon and say, God was here this morning. We felt God here this morning. God was there before you got there. And God will be there when you leave because he’s transcendent and eminent. Not only does he fill the known universe, but he’s in you and loves you as one of his children. God is in you. Now, if you want to worship him, if you want to serve him, then it’s critical that you’ve got to understand what God requires of you. So let’s start with this. You want to see him, don’t you? You say, oh, sure, we can’t wait to see God. If I told you God was next door, in the house next door, would you go over there and knock on the door and say, can I meet God? I mean, if it was a celebrity, you might want to go over there and say, can I meet so and so? Exodus 33, 20 says, but he said this, you cannot see my face for no man shall see me and live. No man shall see me and live. In 1 Timothy 6, 18, who alone has immortality dwelling in unapproachable light whom no man has seen or can see? to whom be honor and everlasting power. Don’t be deceived. Don’t be deluded with people that write books about going to heaven and seeing God and coming back and telling you about it. Stay away from that stuff. The fact they’re trying to sell you something to begin with is dangerous. When you are called to the home office, that means when you pass away, you will see him clearly, but not now because his glory is beyond what you can endure in a human body. Just imagine you want to see an atomic bomb explode from about 100 yards away. You would be vaporized and much more with God whose power we cannot even phantom in our human minds. That’s why God gives us word pictures of his person and his glory throughout the scriptures. For example, his gracious, merciful attitude is seen in the book of Nehemiah chapter nine. It says, you are God. You are ready to pardon. You are gracious and merciful and slow to anger and abundant in kindness and did not forsake them. Ready to pardon. God is ready to pardon you through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ who paid for your sins. Now, if you don’t accept the pardon, then you’re gonna have to stand up to God and explain why at the great white judgment throne. If you wanna accept the pardon, then believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be pardoned. He’s gracious and merciful. He will supply all of your needs. Matthew 6 tells you this. You don’t have to worry about it. He’ll take care of you. He’s slow to anger. God doesn’t get mad at you when you fail, when you mess up. He still loves you. He’s abundant in kindness and does not forsake you. That’s the wonderful thing about his glory and his presence found throughout the scripture. You’ve heard me say those words and I’ll repeat it to you. Many Christians know God But a lot of Christians don’t understand the God they know. Listen to the words of the prophet Jeremiah 9.23. Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, and let not the mighty man glory in his might, nor let the rich man glory in his riches. But let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me. that I am the Lord exercising loving kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, says the Lord. So he says, I want you to know me and understand me. He exercises loving kindness. That’s his unfailing love. He exercises judgment, which is equal justice, God’s justice, and he never makes a mistake. Supreme Court of Heaven is open 24 hours a day, and he is a God of righteousness. And this is exactly what Christ gave us. He who knew no sin was made sin for us so that we could be made the righteousness of God through him. You cannot have a relationship with God without the righteousness of Christ accredited to your account. And so this is what he says. These are the things I delight in, not in your strength, not in your riches, not in your glory, but understanding me and knowing me. There are two points I want to make here. Listen carefully. You cannot love a God you don’t understand. And you cannot understand God without learning about who he is and his characteristics. It’s true we cannot know everything about him, but we can know what he wants us to know because it’s recorded in the scriptures. Listen carefully, Isaiah 55. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. What does that mean? Well, it means he doesn’t have revenge motivation. He doesn’t have emotional attachment to you. That means that. It means this implies that he is indescribable. He is incomprehensible to our human minds. It’s beyond what we can comprehend. It’s beyond what we can describe. But our God is not emotionally driven like we are. You understand that? The Bible uses anthropomorphisms and anthropopathisms. Those are big words. You can look them up in the dictionary. Anthropomorphism and anthropopathism. That’s called the language of accommodation, and it’s when we like to say the eyes of the Lord go everywhere. God doesn’t have eyes. Or he holds the whole world in his hand. God doesn’t have hands. That’s an anthropomorphism. And then an anthropopathism is when we try to give him an emotional contact, like God is angry or God is this or God is that. This is language accommodation so we can understand the God that we love, which is what he wants us to do. But he’s not emotionally driven like we are, which means he doesn’t love you today and hate you tomorrow. Listen, I don’t care where you are right now. You may be incarcerated. If you failed miserably, God still loves you. He’s not mad at you. He has revealed himself to us in many different ways over the Bible, such as in Exodus 3, the Moses and the burning bush. Then he revealed his essence in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the God-man, undiminished deity, true humanity in one body forever, the God-man. In a suppressed demonstration of his glory at the Mount of Transfiguration in Matthew 17, 2, the Bible says Christ was transfigured before them and his face shone like the sun and his clothes became as white as the light. That’s about as close as you’re gonna get to see in God, right there. So what does God desire of you? What does he want you to do? Well, Hosea 6.6 says this, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. What he’s telling you there is ritual without reality is useless. So he wants you to have a relationship, not just go through some ritual that doesn’t mean anything. I desire mercy, not sacrifice, the sacrifice of ritual. And the knowledge more than burnt offering. He wants you to understand him. He wants you to know him. That’s what I just showed you. So if you’ve been listening, you’ve heard that he doesn’t think like you think. And if you want to serve God and glorify God, you need to gain some knowledge about what he expects of you. And so clearly the first thing we must understand is we have a different operating system than even the Old Testament people did. The Old Testament saints didn’t operate the way we do in the church age. The Old Testament saints, they had a spiritual life and it revolved around a faith rest drill. But they didn’t have the filling of the Holy Spirit like you do and they didn’t have a completed canon of scripture like you do. Our spiritual life revolves around that, the filling of the Holy Spirit and the scriptures. But both the Old Testament and the New Testament believer had to be obedient. And that’s motivated by personal love for God. 1 John 5, 3, if you love me, that’s a big if, if you love me, you will obey me and my mandates are not hard. So what does God expect of you? To obey him. Here’s the first thing, the filling of the Holy Spirit is required for you to worship and serve God. Let that sink in. The filling of the Holy Spirit is required for you to worship and serve God. This one mandate is not taught today, nor is it even mentioned in church. And if it is mentioned, it’s usually distorted with weird old people jumping around like a frog in a pond, jumping, jumping, hollering, hollering, screaming, screaming, it’s crazy. The point is this, you cannot execute the Christian life without the filling of the Holy Spirit. And what you see on social media is not the filling of the Holy Spirit, that’s not it. At any single moment of any day, you are either under control of the Holy Spirit or you are under control of your sin nature. There’s no two ways, you gotta be one way or the other. Either you are in fellowship or you’re out of fellowship. You see, your sin nature is the first step towards eventual carnality. Let’s take one single sin, one single sin. For example, you know not to slander, malign somebody, but you do. Or you know not to lie, but you do. You know not to lose your temper, but you do. You know not to cheat on your taxes, but you do. One single sin grieves the Holy Spirit. 1 Thessalonians 5.19, do not quench the Spirit. Ephesians 4.30, do not grieve the Spirit of God, whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. You can quench the power of the Holy Spirit and grieve him by committing one single sin. And you say, I can’t keep up with all my sins. No, nobody can. That’s why the Bible says if we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us and purify us from all wrongdoing, all wrongdoing, everything we did. We might not even remember it. That’s called rebound. That’s the rebound technique, problem-solving device number one. If you don’t use rebound day by day, 24 hours a day, you will not stay filled with the Holy Spirit. If you walk into church to worship God, and you’ve been arguing with your wife or yelling at your kids or mad at some guy in the church and you’re out of fellowship, you get nothing out of that. God is not impressed that you’re there. You’ve got to be filled with the Holy Spirit. You must be filled with the Holy Spirit. You cannot worship God while you’re out of fellowship with the Holy Spirit quenched and grieved. Now come on, how many churches are gonna tell you that before the service start? How many churches are gonna say, and does your church do that, that you should make sure You’re in fellowship with God by naming any known sin before this service starts. How many churches tell their congregation, bow your head, have a moment of private time, examine yourself, and make sure you’re not out of fellowship. If there’s any sin in your life, confess it right now to God so the Holy Spirit can have the freedom to teach you what’s in this message. How many thousands of Christians go to church every Sunday with unconfessed mental attitude sins in their life? Sins of the tongue in their life. And they don’t understand they’re doing a right thing going to church, yes, but it’s in the wrong way. This type of worship is simply ritual with no reality to it. And if you don’t think God takes this serious, let me read a scripture to you. Listen to this warning about taking communion while you have unconfessed sin in your life. This is a warning, excuse me, about taking communion while you have unconfessed sin in your life. It’s in 1 Corinthians 11, 23. Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. That’s communion. But he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. It is for this reason that many are weak, many are sick, and many are dead. For if we would judge ourself, we would not have to be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord so we won’t be condemned with the world. Weak is warning discipline. Sick is intense discipline. Dead is dying discipline. So this is it. If you take communion with unconfessed sin in your life, you’re doing the right thing in the wrong way. And you will be under discipline for doing this. When’s the last time you took communion? Did your pastor tell you this? Did your pastor say, whoa, whoa, before we serve the elements, Let’s have silent prayer and you examine yourself and see if there’s any sin in your life. And if there is, confess it now to God before you do this. Last time you took communion, did he do that? Did he warn you? I repeat, we have no knowledge of God. We’re not taught these things. They’re not brought up. And we substitute Christian entertainment for some kind of worship. We substitute emotional challenges for doctrinal teaching. It appears that many churches have turned into small Christian communities where the staff is always working to keep something going. You know, like a senior trip to Grand Ole Opry or a youth trip to the mountains or a choir trip to perform for other churches across the state. I mean, always something to keep people busy, but seldom ever teaching the mechanics to the Christian life. And the results show clearly that many never learn how to be autonomous. They never learn how to stand on their own two feet. Spiritual autonomy is critical. When I went to Bible college, they taught me the Bible. They taught me the Old Testament. They taught me the New Testament, but they didn’t teach me the application. They never taught me the mechanics of how to live the Christian life. They just taught me the history of the Bible. God expects you to represent him and to do it accurately. And that’s why you have verses like 2 Timothy 2.15. Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of God. So in closing, let me remind you of a few things if I can here in the last couple of minutes. Moses found himself in a jam. when he failed to accurately represent God. In Numbers chapter 20, we have Moses who’s close to 120 years old, remember that. He was 40 years old when he fled Egypt and went to the backside of the Midian Desert because there was an arrest warrant out for his life because he murdered someone. And when he was 80 years old, God appeared to him in a burning bush and told him to go back. And now he’s 120 years old and he’s brought the children of Israel out of Egypt across the Red Sea, through the wilderness, And now they’re at no water, it’s called Meribah, and they’re there and they need water. And Moses makes a very critical mistake. He made a critical mistake, listen carefully. Numbers 20, verse eight through 13. Take the rod, you and your brother Aaron, and gather the congregation together and speak to the rock before their eyes. Speak to the rock before their eyes. Do you hear that? Speak to the rock and I will give water. Thus you shall bring water for them out of the rock and give drink to the congregation and to their animals. So Moses took the rod from Aaron before the Lord as he commanded him. And Moses and Aaron gathered the people together before the rock. And then he went off on them. He said, listen to me now, you rebels. Must we, me and my brother Aaron, bring water for you out of this rock? And then Moses lifted his hands and struck the rock twice with his rod. And water came out abundantly, and the congregation cheered, and the animals had something to drink. But then the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, and this is what he said. Because you did not believe me to hallow me in the eyes of the children of Israel, you will not bring them into the promised land. You’re not gonna do it because you misrepresented me. Moses was relieved of his command because he misrepresented God by striking the rock, not speaking to the rock. When it comes to God, there must be what? Absolute correct procedure. Protocol plan of God means the right thing must be done in a right way. Not only was Moses dismissed and replaced by Joshua, But Aaron, his brother, was also dismissed and taken to heaven. Numbers 20, verse 23. The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in the Mount Or by the border of the land of Edom. And he said, Aaron shall be gathered to his people for he shall not enter the land which I’ve given to the children of Israel because you disobeyed my word at the water of Meribah. That’s Numbers 20, 23 through 29. So it says, take Aaron and take his son Eleazar and bring him up to the top of Mount Or and strip Aaron of his garments and put him on Eleazar his son for Aaron shall be gathered to his people and die. So Moses did just as the Lord commanded. They went up to Mount Or and in the sight of all the congregation, Moses stripped off the robes off of Aaron and put him on Eleazar his son and Aaron died there on top of the mountain. And then Moses and Eleazar came down from the mountain. And when all the congregation saw Aaron was dead, the house of Israel mourned for Aaron for 30 days. God took it very seriously, misrepresenting me. Can you see what Moses said? Can you understand what Moses did? He said, brother Aaron, let’s go up on top of this mountain and have a private word. Aaron didn’t have a clue what was about to happen. And he got him up and said, bring Eleazar with you. I want to talk to him too. And up they go to Mount Or. And everybody’s watching. And then Moses said, take off your priestly garments and put them on your son. Because you’re going to die today. Why? Because he misrepresented God. The protocol plan of God demands precisely correct procedure. That’s why you hear me urging you to get under a well-qualified pastor. Study under his ministry in order that you never, ever misrepresent God. I’ve given you a lot of scriptures. I’ve given you a lot of references. I hope you’re listening because you absolutely must learn God’s plan and obey his word and you cannot afford to make the rules up as you go along. And that’s exactly what so many Christians do. They make their own rules up. They get into some of the most squirrelly, goofy, crazy stuff you’ve ever seen in your life. So let’s just back up for a minute as we close this out. When you go to church this morning or maybe next Sunday morning, wait for your pastor to tell you these words. Are you in fellowship? Are you under control of the Holy Spirit? Or are you letting your sin nature control you because you’ve sinned and haven’t dealt with it yet? Remind him to tell you that. Listen for that. Because if he doesn’t tell you that, then all he’s going to say is, okay, let’s all pray and let’s all turn in our Bible here. And if you’re out of fellowship, if you have unconfessed sin in your life and the Holy Spirit is quenched, the Holy Spirit is grieved, it will do nothing for you. You cannot use it that way. The Holy Spirit is ineffectively, can’t work like that. You must be filled with the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 5.18 tells you that. And the only way you can be filled with the Holy Spirit is by using rebound when you know you’ve sinned and naming the sin and you say, what about the ones I don’t remember? Again, I tell you, the Bible said, if we confess our sins, he’s faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness, even the ones you don’t remember. There should never be any time in your life, any day, you are not filled with the Holy Spirit. Because if you’re not filled with the Holy Spirit, then you’re under control of your sin nature. Only one or two, it’s no if, and, and but about it. You’re either in fellowship or you’re out of fellowship. So which one is it this morning? Are you in fellowship? Are you headed to church this morning? Are you in fellowship? Is the Holy Spirit in control of your life? Or are you out of fellowship because you have unconfessed sin in your life? I sure hope you’re listening. I sure hope you’re paying attention and learning these things. I try hard to make it clear. I try to be firm. I try to urge you to do the right thing in the right way. So it’s my prayer you’re listening. You will take this information and apply it into your life. Thank you for listening to The Floodline.
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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.
