They lived with Him. They talked with Him. They learned from Him. They took Him into their
homes. They fed Him. They spent the night with Him. He was their God, their Lord. They had to
make a determined decision. When He began to tell them, “Look, I’m going to be killed. I’m not
going to be here. There’s not going to be any Kingdom right now. The Kingdom will be
postponed for a while because these folks are going to kill Me, but don’t be afraid. I will return.
Until then, keep your eyes on Me. Be faithful, don’t follow the world.” They had to make that
decision. They had to abandon the things that the world offers. There’s nothing wrong with you
having a family. There’s nothing wrong with you having a home. You’re not a disciple. You’re not
one of these apostles we’re talking about but the principle is the same.
We must make a
determined decision that our assets are not the most important thing in our life. The most
important thing in our life is following Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, obeying Him.
He
said,
“Come unto Me all you that labor and are heavy laden and I give you rest. Take My yoke
upon you and learn of Me. My yoke is easy and My burden is light”
(Matthew 11:28-30). This
simply means He’s not going to ask you to do the impossible but if you’re going to be victorious
as a Christian and give maximum glorification to God, you’re going to have to have a FLOT line
in your soul. You are going to have to have wisdom related to the content of the Word of God in
your soul so that you are not lured by the decoy. Loving the world is akin to depending on what
the world offers you, what the world tells you can actually fulfill your life and make you better if
you had it.
The lure of the world is part of the three pronged attack that Satan will use to
disrupt you, to distract you, to discourage you, and to defeat you.
There’s also the lust of the
flesh. This refers to using what the world offers to fulfill the desires of the flesh. Now remember,
let’s not go overboard here. We all have trends. Some may have a trend toward asceticism. Some
may have a trend toward antinomianism. You ask, “What are these words?” Asceticism is
extreme legalism. These are the religious, self-righteous men that crucified Jesus Christ and
thought they were doing God a favor. Then there is the antinomian and this is the self-indulgent
man. This is the immoral degenerate. On the other side of the coin, there’s a moral degenerate.
This may sound like an oxymoron but a moral degenerate is a religious, self-righteous man who
thinks he’s going to go to heaven because he doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t cuss, he
doesn’t do this or that. He will compare his righteousness to your righteousness and you will
come up short every time. He has relative righteousness. He compares it to others.
The absolute
righteous standard of God is incomparable and that’s why Romans 3:10 says,
“There are
none that are righteous not even one.”
Isaiah 64:6 says,
“All of our righteousnesses are like a
filthy rag in God’s eyes.”
If your trend is toward immorality, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ
and you break fellowship with God, you may go into immorality such as fornication,
drunkenness or some other sort of immoral sin. If you are a legalist you will think you’re not
even sinning. You will think you’re a good person. You’ll just go into judging, maligning, and
criticizing the immoral man but you are just as wicked as he is. If you don’t believe this, read
Romans 2:1-2 and see for yourself.
You cannot judge other people.
You cannot support your
life on their weaknesses. You can’t build your house on a house of cards. Romans 8:5 says,
“For
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those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh but those who live
according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.”
The flesh desires approbation.
The flesh desires power. The flesh desires a lot of things. There are a lot of weaknesses, a lot of
trends, a lot of patterns, and these weaknesses can be in different areas. If they get out of
fellowship with God maybe some people have a trend to go in this immoral way and others,
maybe not. Maybe they have the approbation lust or the power lust or the sex lust or the money
lust or whatever lust it may be. It’s all part of the flesh. If you live according to the Spirit and this
means you are filled with the Holy Spirit by using the problem-solving device called rebound, if
you’re walking in the Spirit then you will be able to get victory over the flesh.
This is why
Galatians 5:16 says,
“Walk in the Spirit
[stay filled with the Holy Spirit]
and you will not
fulfill the lust of the flesh.”
Again Romans 8:5,
“Those who live according to the flesh set their
minds on the things of the flesh. Those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the
things of the Spirit.”
Paul said in Romans 8:8,
“Those who are in the flesh cannot please
God.”
In Romans 8:13,
“For if you live according to the flesh, you will die
[that’s self-destruct]
but if you live by means of the Spirit, you will put to death the deeds of the body and you will
live,”
you will lengthen your life.
What this passage is telling you is that when you break
fellowship with God and you follow the desires of your flesh whether into immoral
degeneracy or moral degeneracy, you guarantee you eventually will self-destruct.
The only
difference is the immoral man knows he’s a loser. He knows what he’s like. The moral degenerate
doesn’t believe this about himself. He has an unrealistic self-image and he justifies why he’s right
in maligning, criticizing, and judging the immoral believer. What is the antidote to the lure of the
flesh? Galatians 5:16-17,
“I say then, walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lust of the
flesh. For the flesh wars against the Spirit and the Spirit wars against the flesh. They are
contrary one to another so you do not do the things you like to do.”
This is the antidote to the
satanic device of the flesh,
“Walk in the Spirit.”
How do you walk in the Spirit? Use
rebound. When you sin name your sin to God.
Confess your sin, get up, and keep moving.
Sinning is kind of like getting knocked down. You get knocked down by your own personal sin,
you confess your sin to God, you get up, and you keep moving. Don’t say “I don’t sin.” Yes you
do. You may not have the immoral trend but you have a sin nature and we all sin. 1 John 1:8
says,
“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”
In reality the
Holy Spirit you receive at salvation, Ephesians 1:13 where you are,
“Sealed by the Spirit unto
the day of redemption,”
the Holy Spirit is your protection from the enemy which is self, the
flesh. At some point in your life you may even shock yourself. You may even do something you
thought that you were not capable of doing. How you respond to this may be how you handle
your future. If you live in guilt then Satan wins the game but if you rebound, confess your sin to
God, resume your spiritual life, then Satan will simply back up and use another attack, come
from another way.
Satan’s objective is to stop you from ever reaching spiritual maturity and
to absolutely stop you from ever glorifying God to the max in your life.
Letting your sin
nature be unbridled, uncontrolled, you’re going to shock yourself. You’re going to do something
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that surprises you and you’ll say, “I can’t believe I did that, that’s not me,” but it is you. By
means of rebound we guarantee that we have a protector in our soul, it protects us from
ourselves, it’s the Holy Spirit. So when the dust settles and you are still alive, and obviously you
are, you’re listening to me, then take heart. God has a plan for you. If you want to avoid the
manipulation of guilt, don’t look at your failures. Look rather at God’s grace, forgiveness, and
restoration. Don’t look at what you did wrong. Look at what He did and how He forgave you. In
order to avoid the decoys of the flesh, you have to renovate your thinking. You have to discover
what is the will of God for your life. You have to be able to think as God wants you to think. It’s
imperative for you to think this way for yourself and for your nation. The gospel of Christ is the
illumination needed to deliver the world from the decoy deployed by the dark one, the one who
works in the shadows. Avoiding the deceptive strategies of the devil is critical. That’s where you
have to remember the first thing is that Satan has a dossier on you. He knows exactly who you
are. He knows exactly what your weaknesses are. He knows exactly where you failed. He knows
all about you. You’re not hiding anything from him and you’re not hiding anything from God
either so remember this. Satan has your number. He knows you. He knows your weaknesses. He
knows your strengths and he does not play to your strength. He will attack you where you are
your weakest. remember this.
If you are weak on the Word of God, then he will seek to get
you to question all truth by presenting something that’s close to the truth but it will be a
decoy to deceive you.
Why would he do this? He is looking to gain an advantage over you
which means that he would like to use you as a witness for his defense in the eternal plan of the
angelic conflict. As I told you his ultimate objective is to impugn the justice of God by
highlighting your failures and using you for his defense. In other words, he wants to use you as a
get-out-of-jail-free card. Through your personal failures as a child of God or via the failure of
your church as an instrument of God, he is seeking to avoid the Lake of Fire. We know how he
attacks us and the next thing we have to learn is how does he attack the church? The first thing
he will do is get the church to doubt the leadership. Then he will deflect the message of the
pastor and he will discourage the congregation. He will seek to get the congregation to disengage
from their spiritual gifts. He will seek to get the congregation to deviate from sound doctrine and
will divide the congregation. This is how he does it. This is what he wants to do. This is his
objective, to destroy the ministry of the body of Christ in the local church. You are part of that
and so you must be aware of these things. It’s critical for you to do this. I thank you for listening
today. I appreciate you being here. I hope you come back next week, same time, same place,
same station. Until then, this is your host Rick Hughes saying thank you for listening to The
FLOT Line.