Castaway Believer – Part 1
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 553 aired on March 27, 2016
Good morning and welcome to The FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick Hughes and for the next few
minutes I would like to invite you to stay with me. As always we have 30 minutes of motivation,
a lot of inspiration, some education, and we do this without any manipulation. We do not seek to
manipulate people. We’re not here to hustle you. We’re not here to sell you something. We’re not
here to ask you to join anything. We’re simply here to give you accurate information. My prayer
is this information will help you verify and identify God’s plan for your life. If you can do this,
then you obviously have the freedom and the privacy to orient and adjust to the plan if you want
to. You are a product of your own decisions. God gave you volition, a chooser, a decider. It’s
inside of you, it’s your free will. You can decide to follow God’s plan, that’s positive volition, or
you can decide to ignore God’s plan, that’s negative volition. I can assure you the choice is yours
and I can assure you that our God is a gentleman. He’s not going to coerce you. He’s not going to
make you a little automaton. He will give you your free will. You are free to choose. This is why
the Bible says “whosoever.” Whosoever is anyone. Anyone who makes a decision to believe in
Jesus Christ is free to do this. Anyone is free to take God’s Word, learn it, and use it. This is
called equal opportunity and equal privilege.
We all have the opportunity to learn God’s
Word equally and we all have the privilege to receive Jesus Christ as our Savior equally.
God gives you this fair chance and you can say, “Yes, I am willing to believe in Christ and
receive Him” or you can say, “No, not at this time” or “No, I don’t believe it’s true” or whatever.
If you do receive Christ as your Savior then you can say, “Yes, I want to learn God’s Word. I’m
willing to take it and learn it.” When I say receive Christ as Savior, John 1:12 simply says,
“To
as many as receive Him, to them God gave the right to become His children
[His sons],
even to
them who believe in His name.”
Believing in Jesus Christ is what it takes to be saved. 1 John
5:1 says,
“He that believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.”
What are we believing? We
are believing that He is the Son of God as He said He is and this is what the Jews did not believe.
They did not believe He was the Son of God. They did not believe He was the Messiah. Many
did, but most did not. Even though He performed miracles, a signature guarantee that He was the
anointed Son of God, many chose not to believe it. In client nation USA today many choose to
believe that Jesus Christ is the anointed Son of God and many choose to not believe. It’s your
choice. You have your own volition, you can decide. If in fact you have decided that He actually
is who He says He is and have believed this and received Him as your Savior, then you must also
make a decision about what you’re going to do in regard to your Christian life. After a person
believes in Jesus Christ, there are decisions that he must make, primarily is he willing to grow in
grace?
2 Peter 3:18 says,
“Grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ.”
This is a mandate from God.
Christian growth is essential. I like to put it this
way, you can’t grow on pablum. You must grow on real, sincere, genuine food. The writer of
Hebrews 5:12 said, “You have been a Christian a long time now and you ought to be teaching
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others but instead you have fallen back where someone needs to teach you again the very first
principles of God’s Word and you are like a baby that needs milk. You cannot handle strong
meat.” I didn’t say this, the Bible says this. What does this mean? It means there are believers in
Jesus Christ who have been saved for many years who cannot digest strong meat. They can’t take
on in-depth Bible study. They get discouraged if the message is over 10 minutes long or over 15
minutes long. Their minds begin to drift and wander and they daydream. They’ve never grown to
be a spiritually mature believer. What I’m all about with this show is looking for those of you
who wish to be spiritually mature believers, not that I’m a pastor because I’m not. I’m a simple
evangelist but I can direct you to where the information is, where you can sit under a well-
qualified pastor. You can grow, whether it’s face-to-face or whether it’s at home in your own
kitchen listening to a DVD or an MP3. You can grow but it’s going to take more than a 15 minute
sermon every week. It’s going to take more than reading a daily devotional by someone who sells
you a book on how to have quiet time with God each day. Your quiet time with God each day as
far as I’m concerned is you sitting under a well-qualified pastor and listening to him teach you
the Bible. This is what I do every day, usually an hour every day listening to a message,
receiving instructions, taking notes, and then by faith applying what I learn. None of us are
perfect. We all make mistakes. We all fail from time to time and this is a given so I don’t expect
anybody to be perfect. Not me, I’m not perfect by a far shot, I know my imperfections. But I also
know that I’ve learned God’s plan and I know that I am seeking to adhere to this plan and live
under divine viewpoint. This is what God would like for you to do also. Recently I was in
Houston, Texas speaking and I gave a message to a local church there and this message dealt
with being a castaway believer, a believer that God has to set aside. Now, this doesn’t mean that
he loses his salvation, that’s not it at all.
As far as God’s plan is concerned, a castaway
believer means that he or she never fulfills the plan and so God has to set them aside and
find somebody else that will do the job.
Yes, they’ll go to heaven. Yes, they will have eternal
life minus a whole lot of rewards they could have had because they got distracted and defeated in
their Christian life. None of us want to fail in this area. Consider the Christian life like a race and
Paul uses an athletic metaphor in 1 Corinthians that I want to talk to you about. It’s a race around
an oval track, a 440 they call it in track and field. Four times around the track is a mile and one
time is a 440 race. If you’re going around the track, you start off at the start line, run down to the
lower end, go around the curve, then go down the long straightaway on the back straight, come
around the bottom curve, and then head up the straightaway in the front straight toward the finish
line.
God wants you to finish the race.
Where are you in the race? Have you just started the
race? Are you sprinting down toward the first turn or have you already gone around the turn? Are
you on the backside headed down the straightaway or have you rounded that final turn and now
you’re headed toward the finish line? This often has to do with your age, how long have you been
a Christian? Are you in your 60s or your 70s now? If you are, you can see the finish line, there’s
no doubt about that. Young believers in their 20s and 30s, they’re just going around that first
curve, aren’t they? They haven’t even hit the backstretch yet. This is what I talked about in
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Houston.
Make no mistake about it, Satan will use every possible resource he has to
frustrate your efforts to get you to step off the course before you finish the race.
Many times
I have spoken in churches, in schools, on the radio and people have responded. The question is,
where are they now? Are they still in the race or have they stepped off the track? To be honest,
hundreds of people that I’ve met in churches and schools have been distracted by the details of
life. Once they appear to get what they want from God, then they get distracted. Many people
join the gym on New Year’s and they say, “I’m going to get in shape and I’m going to do it right
this time.” They pay their money and the gym smiles because after about two weeks they never
see them again but they have their money. People get bored easily. They’re not willing to pay the
price. Being a mature believer requires a price. Jesus said, “You are going to have to take up your
cross and follow Me, there is no way around it. I am a divider, I am not a unifier. I will divide
your house.”
Once you got saved, once you accepted Christ as your Savior, are you willing to
continue to grow in grace? Are you willing to set aside time every day to study God’s Word? Are
you willing to rebound or name your known sins to God when they occur so you can guarantee
that you’re in fellowship and you’re not out of fellowship, under control of your sinful nature?
This is the worst place for the believer to live. Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, a church full
of troubles and problems, all sorts of conflicts, and he was trying to get them to remember the
doctrine that he taught them. This is what he said in 1 Corinthians 9:24-27. He uses an athletic
metaphor to encourage them. Let me read it to you.
“Do you not know that those who run in a
race all run, but only one will receive the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it.
Everyone who competes for the prize is temperate
[self-controlled]
in all things. Now, they do it
to obtain a perishable crown but we for a crown that will not perish
[an imperishable crown].
Therefore, I run not with uncertainty. I fight and not like one who just punches the air. I
discipline my body. I bring it into subjection lest when I have preached to others, I myself should
wind up being disqualified
[or a castaway]
.”
Run in such a way that you can obtain it. Do you
know this means you can also lose it? That’s right, it is possible that you might not finish the
race.
It is possible that everything God provides you will never take advantage of because
you get distracted.
You get distracted by the details of life. You get distracted by your family, by
your job, by your hobby, by whatever you want. It’s amazing what Satan will give you if you just
won’t finish the race. If he knows that you want to be a celebrity, he’ll make you a celebrity. If he
knows that you want wealth, he’ll give you that wealth. Remember he is the god of this world. I
can assure you of this, if you’re going to grow to maturity, your Heavenly Father is not going to
give you something that will destroy you. He will give it to you in due time, when you’re ready,
when you have the capacity to handle it, and it won’t distract you from your spiritual life. Paul
had to write back to this church. This was a wonderful church in Corinth where he spent 18
months. He went in there as a missionary and took a job as a tent maker, supplying tents for
those who came to visit the Isthmian games. As a tent maker he would often rent tents or make
tents and sell them. He hooked up with two people there in town, Aquila and Priscilla, and they
worked together making tents. Whether or not he led them to Christ, we don’t really know but all
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three of them were together working making tents. Then on every Sabbath Paul would go into
the synagogue and he would teach about Jesus Christ our Lord being resurrected, being the true
Messiah. Eventually two people came to help, Timothy and Silas. They came from Philippi and
brought a financial gift with them. Now Paul was able to set aside the tent making and go into
the synagogue and teach consistently every day. This created a lot of problems because there
were many people responding to his message. Many of the leaders of the synagogue got angry
about it and tried to prosecute Paul as being a heretic. He had to move out of the synagogue and
move into the house of Titus Justice. There he continued to teach, so much so that even Crispus,
the president of the synagogue, and all of his family became believers in Jesus Christ. Yes, there
was a lot of success with the gospel in Corinth and a lot of persecution. So much so that they
took Paul before Gallio to prosecute him as a heretic. Gallio would have none of it, he threw it
out of the court. Paul stayed there quite awhile, 18 months, and then went on his missionary
journey over into Ephesus. There he heard about the problems that were going on back in
Corinth. This is when he wrote this letter and this is when he used this athletic metaphor. There
were problems of sectarianism, partisanship, immorality, lawsuits, marriage and divorce,
stumbling blocks, and judging other believers. All of these things took their toll on the church in
Corinth. Paul, being a master of metaphors, used them all the time. He used a warfare metaphor
to illustrate the Christian life in Ephesians 6:10-17. He used an architectural metaphor to
illustrate the Christian coming to maturity in Ephesians 3:18. He used an agricultural metaphor
to illustrate the labor-intensive ministry that he was in. Then he used the athletic competition
metaphor to illustrate the passage that we are studying, 1 Corinthians 9:24-27. He also used this
same athletic metaphor in 2 Timothy 2:5. Listen as I read it to you,
“Also, if anyone competes as
an athlete, he is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.”
There are rules in the
Christian life.
Do you want to hear,
“Well done My good and faithful servant?”
Do you want to
get that crown of righteousness? You must compete according to the rules. What are the rules?
God’s rules are called the protocol plan of God. Under the concept of the protocol plan of
God, a right thing must be done in a right way.
This means: 1. As a believer in Jesus Christ
you must stay filled with the Holy Spirit. 2. As a believer in Jesus Christ you must grow in the
grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior. You must do as 2 Timothy 2:15 says,
“Study
to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed.”
Where would
you be ashamed? You would be ashamed at the Judgment Seat of Christ when you see all of your
good deeds burned up as wood, hay, and stubble and you have no crown. This will happen
because people do not pay attention to the protocol plan of God. They do all the right things like
prayer, going to church, giving, singing, going on mission trips but they do it in the wrong way.
They don’t do it under the filling of the Holy Spirit. They don’t even know how to be filled with
the Holy Spirit. They assume that the Christian life is just a series of being sweet and nice and
doing good things for people. Listen, this is part of the Christian life, no doubt about it, but it’s
much more than this. It’s a spiritual life and it requires some spiritual insight.
You must be filled
with the Spirit if you want to fulfill God’s plan for your life. Problem-solving device #1 on
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the FLOT line of your soul is how you are filled with the Spirit. It’s called rebound.
When
we sin we need to rebound,
“Confess our sin and He is faithful and just to forgive us”
(1 John
1:9). Let me tell you something.
There is nothing worse than devoting your life to something
that in the end will make no difference anyhow.
Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9:27,
“I discipline
my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be
disqualified.”
I cannot think of anything worse than for salt to lose its flavor. Luke 14:34,
“Salt
is good but if even salt has become tasteless, with what will it be seasoned?”
You’re suppose to
be the salt of the earth.
Without doctrine, without the correct Word of God in your soul, without
you moving forward and growing in grace and becoming a mature believer, you are flavorless.
Luke 14:35 continues,
“It is useless either for the soil or for the manure pile; it is thrown out.
He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
God doesn’t want to have to set you aside. I’m sure God
has a wonderful, marvelous, fantastic, phenomenal plan for your life. What have you done about
it? Have you ignored it? Have you been too busy to even research what the Word of God has to
say to you? Have you fallen into the trap of being a legalistic, ritualistic Christian? Ritual
without reality is meaningless. Do you think God is impressed because you don’t smoke? Do you
think God is impressed because you don’t drink? Do you think God is impressed because you go
around and tell everybody “Hello brother, hello sister?” Do you think God is impressed if you
don’t know and understand His Word and you are not learning and growing? Listen to what Jesus
our Lord said,
“Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me. My yoke is easy and My burden is
light”
(Matthew 11:29-30). God is not going to ask you to do something you can’t do but He is
telling you this,
“Study to show thyself approved.”
This is a mandate, this is not a request.
Unless you learn God’s plan, you will spend hours doing worthless deeds that will amount
to nothing more than wood, hay and stubble.
Unless you learn God’s plan you will be
distracted by the devil easily. He will lure you away from it so easily that you will find your
spiritual life being set aside as you pursue the details of life, as you pursue your “dream.” In the
end you will do something that makes no difference anyhow.
Your time on this earth is for
God’s plan, this is all it’s for.
In Luke 14:33,
“So then, none of you can be My disciples who
does not give up his own possessions.”
Do you want to follow Jesus Christ? Priority number one,
His will for your life. This doesn’t mean that you have to give up your car, give up your home,
and go live in the jungle. That’s not what He’s saying. What He is saying is there’s a priority and
the priority is His plan first. God called you for a reason and the reason is between you and Him.
The question is, will you finish your task or will you be replaced by somebody else that
will?
In 2 Timothy 1:9,
“God saved us and God called us to be holy, not because of what we
have done but because of His own plan and His own kindness.”
Did you know that Saul the king
of Israel was fired by God and replaced by David? In 1 Samuel 15:23,
“Because you rejected the
Word of the Lord, He has rejected you from being king over Israel.”
That’s right, God replaced
him. Did he go to heaven? Sure he did. Did he fulfill God’s plan on this earth for his life? No,
absolutely not. Suffering the loss of rewards, having shame at the Judgment Seat of Christ, is this
not reason enough for you to want to finish the race you have started? You believed in Christ,
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you accepted Christ, and now all of a sudden through all of the distractions, your family, your
money, your home, your car, your job, your community, your whatever, God’s plan is on the back
burner isn’t it? You haven’t been adhering to that plan have you? You find a little bit of time for
God on Sunday and that’s about it. You don’t have time to study every day. You never come to the
place of occupation with Christ which is problem-solving device #10.
If you never come to
occupation with Christ, you will never fulfill the objective of God’s plan, why you got saved
to start with.
Losing all rewards, having shame at the Judgment Seat of Christ, Revelation 3:18,
“The shame of your nakedness”
is not God’s plan. How do you lose your momentum? How do
you slide into being an unproductive believer? Well, there are a couple of passages that the Lord
taught about this using parables. One of them is in Luke 13:6-9 where He taught about the
unproductive fig tree. The other is in Luke 12:35-48 where our Lord taught about the ineffective
servant-leader who didn’t watch for the Master’s return. That unproductive fig tree is to be cut
down and replaced by one that will bear fruit. The lazy servant-leader of Luke 12 is the one who
failed to wait and watch for the Master’s return. In this parable Jesus said he would face severe
discipline and loss of reward when the Master came back. Do you want to hear a verse that
should get your attention?
Luke 12:48,
“For to whom much is given, of him much is required,
and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask more.”
Just how much has God
given you? He gave you the Holy Spirit. He gave you His Word. He gave you His Son on the
cross paying the penalty for your sin. He has a plan and a destiny for you. He has given you
spiritual gifts.
There is so much that God gives you and there is much that He requires of
you.
Before you can do any of it, you must grow in grace and you must understand His plan or
you will wind up doing a lot of stuff that you think you’re doing for God and in the end is
nothing but wood, hay, and stubble. You did the right things but you did them in the wrong way.
Do you want to keep yourself in the game? The first thing is don’t drift from grace.
Don’t move
away from grace, saving grace, living grace, dying grace and surpassing grace.
In 2 Timothy
4:3,
“The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine,”
and that time is today for
sure. People don’t want to listen to the Word of God. They don’t want to grow. They don’t want to
learn about their grace assets. They don’t accept saving grace,
“For by grace are you saved
through faith”
(Ephesians 2:8). They don’t like living grace where God supplies all your needs
and you don’t have to get out and hustle. You don’t have to sell stuff, raise money, do all that
stuff. Just let God supply the need. If God pays for it, then He’s in it, the same thing we do on
this radio show. You don’t hear us ask for money. We have to pay to get these station hours. If
God’s in it, He’ll pay for it. It’s just that simple. Don’t drift from grace in your life. Learn God’s
problem-solving devices. Learn grace orientation and what it’s all about.
Then don’t deviate
from sound doctrine. Once you learn it, don’t leave it. It’s always Satan’s desire to deceive
you, to get you to leave sound doctrine, to get you to go into another direction so you move
away from the protocol plan of God.
This is exactly what Timothy faced in 1 Timothy 1:19-20
when two men, Hymenaeus and Alexander, moved away. They began to teach something that
was false and foreign.
Lastly, never doubt God’s timing and God’s provisions, always there
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and always perfect.
Do you remember Abraham and Sarah? Do you remember God telling them
that they would have a child and them getting impatient? Do you remember Sarah saying,
“Abraham, since I’m not conceiving why don’t you go over there and have sex with Hagar your
handmaiden and she can give you a child” and he did? Out came Ishmael, the father of the Arab
race today. My goodness, what would it have been like if he had not listened to Sarah, if he had
not gone in to Hagar and had a child? There wouldn’t even be an Arab race today. God has a
plan, He uses all things, they all come together. You must learn the plan. I hope I’m challenging
you. Come back next Sunday, same time, same place. Until then, this is your host Rick Hughes
saying thank you for listening to The FLOT Line