Spiritual Appetite
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 998 aired on October 6, 2024
Good morning and welcome to The FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick Hughes and for the next few
minutes please stay with me. It won’t be long, just about 30 minutes of motivation, inspiration, a
whole lot of education and no manipulation because we don’t con you. We’re not trying to raise
money. We’re not trying to sell you anything. We’re not trying to solicit your support. What we
are asking you to do is to listen as I try to verify and identify the plan of God for your life. If I’m
able to do this, then as I always say, you have the opportunity to orient and adjust to the plan. It’s
really up to you. My job is to be accurate and get it right and this has been my pleasure to do for
many many years now. Thank you for listening. Thank you for giving me a few minutes of your
time this morning. Let me remind you of our website. If you go there and take a look at it, you
will see the many books that we offer free of charge. I think you will enjoy getting these
especially
Bible Promises And Principles
that deals with the many promises God gives you in the
Word. Also a book on
God’s Grace In Aging
and also our book
Life’s Toughest Years
dealing
with young people and what they go through. This material is there available for you free of
charge and you can just order from the website as well as listen to some of the books read to you
by our announcer Jack Steele. Give us a call if you’d like to, thank you. Today we are going to
talk about your spiritual appetite. What is your appetite like? I know what mine’s like, I’m ready
for dinner. You’re probably the same way. Keep this in mind, I’m recording this in the afternoon
but you’re hearing it in the morning. That’s why I said I’m ready for dinner. Let’s read a verse,
okay? Matthew 5:6,
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be
satisfied.”
According to Matthew, our Lord gave these words to the disciples who followed Him
up a mountain when He removed Himself from those who were seeking healing from sickness
and infirmities. These people were impressed with the spectacular gifts He was performing like
healings and miracles. The hunger they had was not necessarily for righteousness. What they
wanted was something He could do for them, not who He was, but what He could do. Listen to
the background to this verse and you will understand it. In Matthew 4:23-25,
“Jesus was going
throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom,
and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people. The news about
Him spread throughout all Syria; and they brought to Him all who were ill, those suffering with
various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, paralytics; and He healed them. Large crowds
followed Him from Galilee and the Decapolis and Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the
Jordan.”
Notice huge, massive crowds were following Him because of the spectacular miracles
He was performing which in fact identified exactly who He was, the unique Son of God. What
He had to say to the select few who followed Him up on this mountain is known as the Sermon
on the Mount. We are going to talk about this. In these verses Matthew recorded the personality
profile of the ones who desired to become Christlike. I want you to notice this personality
profile and what is required. It says in Matthew 5:1,
“When Jesus saw the crowds, He went up on
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the mountain; and after He sat down, His disciples came to Him
[they followed Him].
”
The
crowd was out of control. There were massive crowds, way too many people, so He had to get
away and went up on the mountain. Obviously, the majority of people didn’t go up on that
mountain. It was too steep, too inconvenient with too much effort required but notice that
positive volition, people who are really hungry for the truth, seek it out whatever the cost might
be. The disciples who sought it out heard this amazing information that He gave them. Verbal
communication is how you learn. Listen to Matthew 5:2,
“He opened His mouth and began to
teach them.”
This requires other people to stop talking and listen. You can’t learn if you can’t
listen and you know, many people were complaining about having to climb that steep mountain.
“It’s too big. Why did He go all the way up to the top of this hill? Why didn’t He just stay at the
bottom of the hill?” They wondered why He didn’t stay on level ground. That would have been
much easier. Here’s a great principle for you to remember that we can extrapolate from this
verse. If you’re ever going to grow spiritually, it is going to require some effort. If you want to
have a steak you have to cook it. It requires effort. If you want to fry fish, you’ve got to catch
and cook them. This requires effort. If you want to grow spiritually, it takes effort. Secondly, if
you desire to follow the Lord Jesus Christ you must be willing to listen and learn. In Matthew
11:28-30 Jesus our Lord said,
“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give
you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and
you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
We discussed this
verse in our book
God’s Grace In Aging
. You might want read about it and the Z
ugos
template.
Listen to this. The first thing He wants you to learn is how to think because it’s what in your
thoughts that you actually live. The Christian life is
“Learn from Me,”
He said. You must learn
the Word of God if you’re going to grow up spiritually. It is going to require some effort. It’s
actually in your thoughts where you live the Christian life. How do I know this? Because
Philippians 2:5 tells me,
“Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus.”
In
other words, learn to think like He thought. Learn to have the mindset that He had. Did you hear
Him say,
“Learn from Me?”
That’s what He said. If you learn from Him what are the results?
“You will find rest.”
Rest from what? Maybe from the demands of the religious legalism that so
many were under at the time and maybe from the burdens you carry through life like guilt and
depression. Notice He said,
“You will find rest for your souls.”
He didn’t say, “Rest for your
bodies.” He said,
“Rest for your souls.”
Why didn’t He say rest for your body? Because
unfortunately, man is under a curse and must work to survive according to Genesis 3:17-19.
“Then to Adam He said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten
from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it;’ cursed is the
ground because of you; in toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles
it shall grow for you; and you will eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face you will
eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to
dust you shall return.’”
Man is under a curse. This is what awaits this body. This body is not
going to heaven. God doesn’t need this body. He is going to give you a resurrection body. Those
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of you that are getting on in age are beginning to hurt, don’t worry about it. Once this body gives
out there is a new body waiting for you in heaven. This body is going back to the dust where it
belongs because it won’t operate in heaven. It has a sin-infected nature and it can’t work in
heaven. It’s got to go away. When our Lord says you can have rest in your soul, what’s He
referring to? He’s referring to the mentality of your soul. We know this rest as the faith-rest drill.
It’s one of the great problem-solving devices on the FLOT line of your soul. Remember the
FLOT line has 10 unique problem-solving devices. Rebound is #1. The filling of the Holy Spirit
is #2. The faith-rest drill is #3. Unfortunately, many Christians today are part of the show and
tell generation. Our kids used to go to school to show and tell. They would take something to
school and tell something about it. This show and tell generation is due to the influence and
impact of social media. There’s no need for much of the video content that believers display on
their social media accounts today but it’s all promoted as a true Christian experience. Again,
remember what the Lord said,
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.”
The
word blessed is an interesting word. It’s the Greek word
makarios
. It doesn’t really mean blessed.
It means happiness. It says, “Happiness belongs to those who hunger and thirst for
righteousness.” The Greek word hunger means to be hungry. It means desiring to be fed. Here’s
my question to you this morning. Are you hungry for the clear, lucid, in-depth teaching of
Scripture or are you satisfied with mere spiritual appetizers? If you want to grow spiritually,
you’re going to have to put out some effort. You can’t just show up and shut up once a
week.You’re not going to grow this way. You may go to a great church. You may have a great
pastor. But you’re not going to grow with just a 30 minute sermon on Sunday morning. Think
about putting your kid in the first grade for 30 minutes a week and see what happens. The kid
will never get out of first grade. Many Christians never get out of the first grade spiritually
because they are not willing to put forth the effort. They’re not willing to do this so they are just
satisfied with spiritual appetizers. True spiritual awakening results in a craving, the desire, the
hunger and thirst to learn more and more about the One that saved you, to know as much as you
can about the author and the finisher of our faith, the Lord Jesus Christ. Hebrews 12:2,
“Fixing
our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith.”
I’ve seen a lot of modern revival
movements and social media baptism services that claim astounding numbers of converts and
they show it on the social media. “Oh look, here’s a video. Oh, we’re baptizing all sorts of people
in the lake.” I’m thankful for the genuine conversions. Great, fantastic, and it is my prayer that
these converts will get under the ministry of a solid, sound Bible teaching pastor and eventually
grow to spiritual maturity. Listen, it took me a solid year after I got saved before I even knew
what happened to me. I didn’t understand why I continued to sin nor did I understand the need
for spiritual growth even though I was attending Bible college at the time. Nobody really taught
me the mechanics of the Christian life, they just taught me about the Bible. I went to Bible
college and learned the titles of books Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I learned Genesis,
Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy and all that but nobody taught me how the mechanics of the
Christian life function. This may be true with you as well. Maybe you understand the Bible but
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you don’t understand the mechanics of the Christian life. Remember you’ve heard me say that
God demands protocol and a right thing must be done in a right way. A right thing done in a
wrong way is still wrong. It took me a while to get this. Now I know why so many of my friends
that came to Christ at the same time as me are no longer to be found. Now I understand it. They
got distracted. They got defeated in their spiritual growth because the emotions wore off and
there was no foundation to build upon. True, they got saved. True, they are going to heaven, but
they did not hunger and thirst for righteousness. This is my question for you today. Do you
hunger and thirst for righteousness? What type of individual is this person that hungers and
thirsts for righteousness? Do you want to be righteous before God? This is the motivational
factor called personal love for God. Remember, our Lord said in John 14:15,
“If you love Me
[this is a third class condition],
you will keep My commandments.”
The Apostle John made it
clear in 1 John 2:5,
“But whoever keeps His Word, in him the love of God has truly been
perfected.”
Let’s understand something this morning. The true test of the love of God is
obedience. In 1 John 5:3,
“For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His
commandments are not burdensome.”
This is what I had to do. I had to learn His mandates and I
didn’t learn them overnight either. As I got into the ministry in the early 70s and I began to travel
across the country speaking in high schools across the states of Mississippi, Alabama and
Georgia, every night I sat in my motorhome that I traveled in and studied the teaching of the
Word of God from my pastor by a tape. Night after night I sat down, had dinner, opened the
Bible, turned on the tape and studied. I put forth the effort so that I knew what I was talking
about, so that I had some sort of basis because I was hungering and thirsting for righteousness.
This hunger has never gone away, even today. Do you have this hunger? Do you have the desire
to grow spiritually? Are you willing to put forth the effort to do whatever it takes to become the
man God wants you to be because if I talk about being righteous before God, we have to
recognize a couple of things. Let’s take a look at this. First of all, there is what we call positional
truth. In 2 Corinthians 5:21,
“He
[God the Father]
made Him
[the Son]
who knew no sin to be sin
on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
What did the verse
say? “Happiness belongs to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” The righteousness of
God in Christ Jesus is positional truth. It refers to our irrevocable position in Christ Jesus. When
we get saved, we are absolutely righteous because we have His righteousness given to us. He
took our sins on the cross and at faith He gives us His righteousness. The one who hungers and
thirsts for righteousness can also refer to something else, something my pastor taught to me
called capacity righteousness. This righteousness is rewarded in eternity under what’s called the
Crown of Righteousness. In 2 Timothy 4:8,
“In the future there is laid up for me the Crown of
Righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only
to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.”
So we have two types of righteousness
here. We have the righteousness of Christ when we put our faith in Him at salvation. Then we
can build and accumulate capacity righteousness as we grow spiritually. Capacity righteousness
is developed through the filling of the Holy Spirit. Do you understand how to be filled with the
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Holy Spirit? Do you know what this means? Remember 1 John 1:9 says,
“If we confess our sins,
He is faithful and righteous to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
When you sin, you quench the Holy Spirit and you grieve the Holy Spirit. You know this by now,
I’ve told it to you a thousand times on this radio show. You can’t glorify God as long as your sin
nature is in control. You have to be in fellowship. You have to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
You’re sealed with the Holy Spirit the day you get saved. Ephesians 1:13 tells you this. But
you’re also commanded by Paul in Ephesians 5:18 to be filled with the Holy Spirit. This only
happens one way, when you get rid of the personal sin you’re committing in your life. If you sin
by mental attitude sins or if you sin by sins of the tongue or if you sin by some overt sin, you are
out of fellowship with God. You’re still in the relationship, the top circle. Remember the two
circles we have talked about? But you are not in fellowship. You are not filled with the Holy
Spirit. You do not have the ability to develop capacity righteousness without being filled with the
Holy Spirit. This can only occur when you use rebound in your life. I want you to do a self-
examination right now. Think about your day. What time is it where you are? 7:30, 8:30, 9:30?
It’s one time in Maine and another time in California. They are several hours different. Are you
in fellowship? It’s often Sunday morning when people get out of fellowship isn’t it? When you’re
trying to get ready to go to church and everybody starts arguing and yelling, “Get up, let’s go,
we’re going to be late. Go, go, go, go.” The kids are dragging, mom’s dragging, dad’s dragging.
Nobody gets to church on time and by the time you get there, everybody is fussing and fighting.
You are out of fellowship. You may be in the right place but you’re in the wrong way and until
you rebound and confess your sin, you’re not going to hear from God the Holy Spirit. You may
hear the Bible taught by the preacher but you’re not going to be able to cycle and use the
information in your soul because you’ve quenched and grieved the Holy Spirit. The only way
you can develop capacity righteousness is through the filling of the Holy Spirit. This occurs
through building spiritual IQ in your life and sustaining your spiritual momentum day after day,
month after month, year after year, moving forward spiritually. Capacity righteousness means
you understand and you use God’s Word as your guide in your life. This type of living gives you
stability. It’s a wonderful thing. This is essential for you if you wish to be part of the pivot that
will deliver our nation when times of apostasy and degeneracy begin to flood our nation like
today. This type of living, the stability we’re talking about, this capacity righteousness we’re
talking about is not visible to other people but it is definitely manifested in compassion and can
be manifested through impersonal love to other individuals that you know. What we’re calling
capacity righteousness is simply you staying in fellowship with God the Holy Spirit and you
producing divine good which glorifies God and is rewardable at the Judgment Seat of Christ.
This is the Crown of Righteousness. 1 Corinthians 3:11-15 calls it wood, hay and stubble or gold,
silver and precious stones. Do you know what wood, hay and stubble is? It’s all the right things
you did in the wrong way. You showed up to church, a right thing. You sang in the choir, a right
thing. You gave money in the offering, a right thing, but you did it in the wrong way. You
quenched the Holy Spirit. You grieved the Holy Spirit. You had unconfessed sin in your life. A
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right thing in a wrong way burns up. It’s called wood, hay and stubble. Just think about it. Every
good deed you did thinking you were doing it for God, if you were out of fellowship at the time,
you simply manifested human good, wood, hay and stubble, and it will be burned up. You won’t
burn up. You’ll be saved. This passage says you will be saved,
“Yet so as through fire,”
but you
will have no Crown of Righteousness because you didn’t grow. You didn’t hunger and thirst for
righteousness. You didn’t have this desire. You weren’t willing to put forth the effort to get into
God’s Word on a daily basis, to get under a well-qualified pastor and start studying. If you don’t
know how to do it, contact me. I can tell you how to study at home every day, every night just
like I do listening to DVDs or listening to the online presentations by well-qualified pastors that
are out there teaching the Word of God. You can see believing produces this righteous living.
Believers like us can produce righteous living in Micah 6:8. Do you want to hear what it’s like?
Listen, I’ll explain it to you. Here’s righteous living in Micah 6:8,
“He has told you, O man, what
is good
[what is righteous]
; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love
kindness, and to walk
humbly with your God.”
Oh, this doesn’t sound like very much. This is
righteous living. God wants you to walk justly. God wants you to act honorably. God wants you
to have integrity. God wants you to be impartial. God wants you to be honest and fair. This is
what He wants, He wants you to do justly. Is this too much to ask? God wants you to love mercy.
This is the compassion and forgiveness that He showed you.
“For God so loved the world, that
He gave His uniquely born Son”
(John 3:16). What else could He be but be compassionate. 2
Peter 3:9 says, “[The Lord is]
not wishing for any to perish.”
This is compassion. He loves you.
He loves me. He loved us before we were even born and in His compassion for us He forgave us
through Christ Jesus on the cross. God loves mercy. Do you? Can you show mercy to people that
have wronged you? Can you show mercy to people that don’t like you? Can you show mercy like
God does? Yes you can if you’re filled with the Holy Spirit and yes you can if you are operating
on the virtue love concept of impersonal love which is another problem-solving device we talk
about. Problem-solving device #8 is impersonal love. God wants you to love mercy and then
God wants you to walk humbly. What does this mean? It means the absence of arrogance. One of
the greatest sins that is not talked about in the Christian life is arrogance. You know what
arrogance is. It’s self-justification where you justify why you are right and the rest of the church
is wrong. You’re right and your mate is wrong. You’re right and everybody else is wrong. In your
arrogance you justify why what you do is right and they’re wrong and then you convince
yourself. You become self-absorbed with it. Self-justification and self-absorption are both traits
of arrogance. It’s not walking humbly. Walking humbly doesn’t mean you have to stand stoop
shouldered saying, “I wouldn’t hurt a little bird. I’m such a humble person.” This isn’t what he’s
talking about. It’s talking about orientation to authority. You can’t have humility if you don’t have
orientation to authority. Walking humbly means to obey the Word of God, to live it and hunger
and thirst for righteousness. Listen to Proverbs 21:3,
“To do righteousness and justice is desired
by the Lord more than sacrifice.”
What about 2 Timothy 3:16?
“All Scripture is inspired by God
and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.”
Here it is
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again. No believer is capable of righteous living without instruction from the Scripture because
morality is not what Matthew 5:6 is speaking of when it says,
“Blessed
[Happy]
are those who
hunger and thirst for righteousness.”
Keep these thoughts in mind. A spiritual birth demands a
spiritual life. Therefore, during our post salvation experience we have the option to accept or
reject the Word of God. Many believers never make time for Bible study on a daily basis because
they are like an automobile that runs out of gas. They are still an automobile, but they sure aren’t
going anywhere without gas. This is why we have the verse in 2 Timothy 2:15 that says,
“Be
diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed,
accurately handling the Word of truth.”
This is the effort I’m talking about. Remember, the Bible
is not a novel. It’s a textbook designed by God to be taught to you by those who have the spiritual
gift of pastor-teacher. Here’s a question for you. Are you being well-fed by a qualified pastor and
are you growing as per 2 Peter 3:18 where it says,
“Grow in the grace and knowledge of our
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity.”
If you’re
not, then I’ve got a simple question. What is the goal of your spiritual life? What’s the goal of
your spiritual journey? You must understand this. Do you hunger and thirst for righteousness? I
hope I’ve explained it. I hope you have listened and understand it. It is my prayer you’ll come
back next week, same time, same station. Until then, this is your host Rick Hughes saying thank
you for listing to The FLOT Line