SPEAKER 02 : 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.

SPEAKER 01 : 0:23

Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next 30 minutes, please stick around. It will be a short time of motivation, some inspiration, some education, and absolutely no, not a one, any type of manipulation. No, we’re not trying to raise money. We’re not asking you for money. We’re not trying to sell you anything. We simply want to give you some information. Hopefully that information will help you verify as well as identify the plan of God for your life. And if you can do that, and through the teaching that I’m going to give you this morning, then you’ll be able to orient and adjust on your own if you’d like to do that. It’s up to you. It’s your life. And I got a call this morning from a fellow. I said, what do I do? And I’m like, well, what do you mean, what do I do? Get with it. And sometimes people are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ and they seem to go backwards, not forward. We call that reversionism. They get in reverse. They began to live like unbelievers. And what do I do? Well, the answer is simply you rebound, you confess your sin to God, and you get with it. You are a product of your volition. You have to decide, do you want to live or die? It’s up to you. You want to make it or not make it, spiritually speaking, because we live in a very hostile environment in the USA today and in the world today. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. We do not live in a very forgiving environment. Before we get to that, though, let me remind you that we do podcast all of our radio shows on Apple iPod or Spotify or Breaker, Anchor, some of these podcast venues, and you can always search for The Flotline on any one of those podcast venues, and you can hear anytime, anywhere, any day, anywhere in the world. Also, we have our material that we print up and make available to you free of charge, our latest book, Crash Course in Christianity, as well as the transcripts from the various shows of 2019, 2020. Every show ever taught, it’s all put into words so you can read it yourself. So if you’d like to order any of that, just simply go to our website, rickhughesministries.org, not .com, .org, rickhughesministries.org. Or you can call us at our number, which is 800-831-0718. So anything we can do to assist you in your spiritual growth, that’s what we’re here for. I challenge you and encourage you to put your nose to the grind and grow up spiritually so you can represent Jesus Christ to your generation while you have the opportunity to do so. Now, we live in what’s called a time continuum situation. And while we currently exist in the time continuum, it’s not a very forgiving environment, and there are reasons for that. When I’m recording this today, by the way, we’ve just seen the invasion in the Ukraine. And I don’t know what’s going to happen. You’ll hear this show four weeks later, I’m sure. But we see wars, and we see rumors of wars every day. Let’s not forget what our Lord said to the disciples who had a lot of questions concerning what was going to happen in the end times. In Matthew 24, 1, he said this. We see Jesus was departing from Solomon’s temple where he had just announced the seven woes to the religious leaders who were called Pharisees. This is, if you want to read about it, I’ll go over some of it with you, but it’s in Matthew 23, 13 through 33. Seven woes he condemned the Pharisees, self-righteous religious guys. This condemnation did not earn him any favor with them, as you can imagine. because he called the religious leaders hypocrites, and he stated that they were preventing people from entering heaven. Listen to verse 13 of Matthew 24. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, you are hypocrites, for you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men, for you neither will go in yourselves, and you do not allow those who are entering to go in. This is what the religious crowd does. They’re going to tell you that faith alone in Christ alone is not enough. They’re going to tell you you have to work your way to heaven. You have to earn the forgiveness of God. Even though the Bible says, for by grace are we saved through faith, it’s a gift of God, not of works, as any man should brag about it. In the Old Testament, the Bible made clear all of our works are like a filthy rag in God’s eyes. There are none that are righteous, no, not even one. So the scribes and the Pharisees did just the opposite. They taught people that you can get to heaven by being good, by observing the Jewish rituals and the Jewish laws. And the Lord Jesus Christ called them hypocrites because they themselves did not observe those laws. In verse 14, he described how they stole money from the poor. He said, woe to you scribes and Pharisees, you are hypocrites. For you devour widows’ houses and for a pretense you make long prayers. Therefore, you’re going to receive the greater condemnation. And this is what religion does. It preys on weak people and tries to get money from weak people, but they sound very pious and very self-righteous. Oh, God, this and oh, God, that. The Lord Jesus Christ nailed them. In verse 15, he talked about how they went to great lengths to convert people, then the convert that they converted wound up being worse than the Pharisee who converted him. Listen to what he said. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you’re hypocrites, for you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he’s won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourself. That’s self-righteous arrogance. And then in verse 23, again, he spoke of their self-righteous giving. He said, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you’re hypocrites, for you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin, and you’ve neglected the weightier matters of the law, such as justice, mercy, and faith. These ought you to have done without leaving the others undone. So this is where people go down the wrong way, trying to say, well, if you drink, you won’t go to heaven. If you’re drunk, you won’t go to heaven. If you’re this or that, you won’t go to heaven. And that’s not what the Bible says. The Bible says, whosoever will can come, whosoever will can come. Jesus made it plain. And if you, I don’t care who you are, I don’t care what you’ve done. If you would like the opportunity to begin your life all over again, the Bible clearly says, if any man’s in Christ, he’s a new creation. Old things are passed away and all things become new. But you say, I’ve done that already, but I’ve gone back into sin. You went in reverse, didn’t you? That’s why we have rebound, problem-solving device number one that says if we will confess our sins to God, he will forgive us and he will cleanse us of all unrighteousness. That may be what you need to do, which will get you to the filling of the Holy Spirit. Once you get to the filling of the Holy Spirit, then you can control the flesh. You don’t have to live under the desires of the flesh. You can let the Holy Spirit control your life, and you’re told in Ephesians 5.18 to do that. So he exposed these people. He exposed them for what they do. He nailed their self-righteous, pious attitude in verse 25. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you’re full of extortion and indulgence, Matthew 24, 25. Then he exposed their two-sided lives. He said, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, Man, you think they’re getting tired of hearing this? For you’re like whitewashed tombs, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside you’re full of dead men’s bones and all sort of uncleanliness. So they’re living two-sided lives. They look all wonderful and self-righteous and cleaned up and godly on the outside, but on the inside they’re full of self-righteous sins, mental attitude sins, bullies trying to intimidate people to obey the law when they themselves didn’t do it. And then in verse 29, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn them with monuments. And then you say, if we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them that killed the prophets. And that’s a lie. They would because they were trying to kill the Lord Jesus Christ. And then in verse 39, he said goodbye. That’s it. He was done with them. Here’s what he said in verse 39, Matthew 24, for I say to you, you shall see me no more till you say, blessed is he who cometh in the name of the Lord. And after pronouncing these seven woes on these scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees, he left the temple, never entered the temple again, went out to the top of Mount Olives. His disciples followed him and showed up and they said, Lord, what’s going on? His disciples came up and showed him the buildings of the temple, the Bible says. And these condemnations that the same patterns you see today in organized religion, it’s the same thing today. Now here, once they got to the top of Mount Olive, he explained how things are going to end. In Matthew 24, four through nine, Jesus answered and said, take heed, don’t let anyone deceive you. For many will come in my name saying, I am the Christ. And this is something that happens in the tribulation. And they will deceive many. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you’re not troubled. For all of these things must come to pass. But the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation. Kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines, pestilence, earthquakes in various places. And all these are the beginnings of sorrow. What you have to be careful about doing is in interpreting the trends of history and saying that this means Christ is about to return. It does not. Christ could return today. He doesn’t need anything to happen. We’re waiting on the exit resurrection or what we call the rapture of the church. And these things that he’s talking about here are different. This is times during the tribulation. But listen, it’s very similar, isn’t it? Wars and rumors of wars, don’t worry about it. Don’t be afraid. You don’t need to fear that somebody’s gonna destroy the world. You don’t need to fear that Russia’s gonna get into a nuclear bomb contest with America and we’re gonna bomb each other and nobody’s gonna be left and we’re gonna destroy the world. That’s not true. You cannot destroy the world. The Bible tells us how the world will end. And it’s not that way. The Lord Jesus Christ has to come He has to sit on the throne of David and have his thousand-year millennial reign before this world is eventually destroyed and replaced with a new heaven and a new earth. So don’t buy into all that greeny stuff that we’re going to destroy the world, nobody’s going to be left. Our Lord began to disclose the tribulation period. He told the disciples about his eventual return to assume his rightful throne in Jerusalem. I’m telling you these things so you’ll understand the importance of of having a flat line in your soul. Why should you have a flat line in your soul? So you can stand against the enemies of God. And by doing so, effectively glorify the Lord Jesus Christ as you represent him to those whom you come in contact with. Why is that? Because we don’t live in a very forgiving environment, not at all. Don’t forget our Lord was hated by the religious community. He exposed their lies. He exposed their hypocrisy. And remember that the greatest power of Satan lies in organized religion. Remember that. And you start saying, oh, they worship the devil, and oh, you can go down and buy devil worship material. That may be all fine and true, but where more people will be denied heaven is in the name of religion. many will say to me in that day the bible says lord lord did i not do this and did i not do that and he said i’ll tell him i never knew you depart from me it’s possible that people think they’re going to heaven because they have church membership people think they’re going to heaven because they don’t cuss smoke drink or chew or run around with those that do people think they’re going to heaven because of something that they do or didn’t do and that’s not true The only way anyone can go to heaven is through Christ. And he said, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life. No man comes to the Father but by means of me. And if they hated the Lord Jesus Christ, and you are a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, they’re going to hate you too. Matthew 24, 9, they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. not a very forgiving environment in the tribulation and not a very forgiving environment right here today. We live in perilous times in the devil’s world. This is what you face if you in fact decide that you have enough guts and enough courage to advance to spiritual maturity in your life. I can assure you Satan will attempt to take advantage of your weaknesses. Why would he do that? Well, so he can impugn the name of God. That’s exactly what he wants to do. He wants to use you as a witness for his defense. And this is exactly what he did once God allowed him to test Job. He said, the only reason Job worships you is you put a hedge of protection around it. Let me take that hedge down and he’ll turn on you. He did not. And that’s exactly what Satan still tries to get believers to do today. Once something bad happens in the Christian’s life, they want to turn on God. Why did you let this happen to me, God? You have to understand suffering and why God allows suffering. Sometimes it’s for discipline. Sometimes it’s for blessing. Sometimes it’s momentum testing. Sometimes it’s evidence testing. But make no mistake about it. A mature believer will go through testing, and that is your time that you can shine for his glory. even if it’s in your old age with health tests and even if it’s in your young age with bad decisions that you made in recovering from those decisions, you can’t look back. You can’t look back at your mistakes. You can’t look back at your failures. You can’t get a guilt complex and go sit in the corner and cry and say, I was a bad Christian. God doesn’t love me. That’s crazy. If you’re still alive, God loves you. He loves you even if you die. He loved you before you were born. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that whoever believed in him would not perish but have everlasting life. So sure, Satan wants you to get a guilt complex. Sure, Satan wants you to go sit down in the corner, suck on your thumb and feel sorry for yourself. That’s not the Christian life. Christian life is when you fail, you rebound. Christian life is when the sin nature takes control, you confess the sin, get back to the filling of the Holy Spirit. Christian life is you standing in faith, using the faithless drill, not being afraid of adverse circumstances in your life and orienting to God’s grace, learning the Word of God. As the Bible says, study to show yourself approved unto God and then developing a sense of destiny, understanding why God brought you here. what your reason for existing is, and then the greatest virtue anyone could ever have is personal love for God. How can you love someone you don’t even know? Once you get to know God, I mean, I didn’t know much about God when I got saved, and I don’t think you did either. But once I got saved, once I accepted Christ as my Savior and I began to learn about God the Father, his attributes, what he did for me, And that develops a virtue in your life and motivates you because the Bible says in 1 John 5, 3, if you love me, you will obey me. And my mandates are not much. They’re not hard. So this is what happens. Satan will attempt to take advantage of you if you decide to reach spiritual maturity. He will try to take advantage of your weaknesses in order to impugn the name of God. So make no mistake about it. That will be your time to shine for God’s glory. In Ephesians 6, Paul used a military metaphor to describe our lives as Christians in the middle of this conflict, in the middle of these what we call non-forgiving environment. He used a military metaphor to describe our life of conflict. And he, don’t forget now, but we have three enemies. Let’s make sure we don’t forget that. The world, the flesh, and the devil, obviously. So before we look at Ephesians 6, let’s remember 1 John 2, 15, don’t love the world. Don’t love the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Loving the world is not virtue love. Loving the world is preoccupation with self. The world belongs to Satan. This is his world, not yours. 2 Corinthians 4, 4, whose minds the God of this age has blinded. Who is the God of this age? It’s a.k.a. the devil. He blinded those who don’t believe lest they would believe in the light of the gospel, the glory of Christ, whose the image of God would shine on them. Satan is good at deceiving deceptive practices so that people will not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. If he can obscure the gospel by works, by religious, by religious activities, as the scribes and the Pharisees demanded that people deserve the law. No one went to heaven by observing the law. No one. And that this is exactly what religion does today. They blind the minds of those who don’t believe. If you’re going to be friends with the world, it’s the devil’s world. You got to understand you’re going to be forced to compromise. You’re going to have to compromise what you believe. If you don’t, you’re going to be condemned for not being inclusive and respectful of the lifestyle of the center. You will be lured by the happiness associated with wealth and beauty. Yeah, that’s going to make you happy, all right. Look at Hollywood. Look at the disasters in Hollywood, the ruined lives and the ruined marriages in spite of the money. Happiness doesn’t come from money. Happiness doesn’t come from beauty. Jesus Christ, the Lord God himself said, happiness belongs to those people who hear my father’s word and keep it. It’s a wonderful way to live without a guilt complex. It’s a wonderful way to live to know that your heavenly father has it all under control. He’s got the whole world in his hands. Yes, he does. So if you try to be friends with the world, you’re going to be compromising everything else just to be friends with them. And that’s not a very forgiving environment. Well, then there’s also the flesh the Bible talks about. It’s the ever-present sin nature. That’s the bad you, the one that likes to lust, to lie, to gossip, to criticize, to malign, to complain, The person who lives blindsided arrogance with unrealistic self-image and unrealistic expectations, that’s your flesh. It’s always with you. Galatians 5.17 says the flesh wars against the spirit, and the spirit wars against the flesh. And these are contrary one to another, so you cannot do the things you should do, the things you want to do. Paul talked about it in Romans when he said, I don’t understand myself at all because I want to do what’s right, but I keep on doing what’s wrong. And he said, it’s obvious that it’s sin in me. And that’s your problem and my problem. We have a flesh, an ever-present sin nature. Now, here’s the wonderful thing. Once you transfer to heaven, once you go to the home office, no more flesh. You get a new body, a resurrection body, and it will not be contaminated with Adam’s original sin. You won’t have a sin nature anymore. But right now, you got it. And if you live under the control of your flesh, then you begin to mimic the lifestyle of the unbeliever. And when you do that, when you live like the unbeliever lives, you neutralize your impact for the Lord Jesus Christ in the devil’s world. Actually, the devil stands on the sideline and claps. He applauds your failure. Why? Well, it vindicates his own failure as a fallen angel. So sure. He wants you to fail. Therefore, he can impugn the name of God and say, well, why could you save this person and not save me? Look what they’re doing. They claim to be your child. You and I both know you failed. You and I both know we failed. You and I both know what kind of real people we are. Question is, are you willing to grow to spiritual maturity? Are you tired of living a double lifestyle? Listen, The third enemy is the deceiver. Romans 12, 9 indicates his eventual incarceration for his deceptive practices. Not only is he a deceiver, but he’s a liar and the father of lies and a murderer. In John 8, 44, you are of your father, the devil. This is what the Lord Jesus Christ told the religious crowd. And the desires of your father you want to do. He, aka the devil, was a murderer from the beginning and it does not stand in truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks it from his own resources for he’s a liar and he’s the father of all lies. Any human viewpoint is a lie. Divine viewpoint is God’s way, God’s word, God’s will. That’s why the Bible keeps telling us, stop thinking of yourself in terms of arrogance beyond what you should think. but think in terms of humility as God has assigned to each one of us a standard of thinking from his word. When you buy into the human viewpoint, you buy the lie of Satan. Listen, you’ve got to come to grips with why God left you here to start with. I mean, when did you actually accept Christ? When did you get saved? For me, it was way back in August of 1967. God left me here for a reason. God left you here for a reason. We are engaged in an angelic conflict. And in that conflict, Satan is seeking to justify his actions in eternity past and vindicate himself by using me and you as witnesses for his defense. Now we have an advocate in heaven, and it’s the Lord Jesus Christ. He intercedes for us. He’s our defense attorney. This is exactly what Satan wants to do. He wants to get out of the lake of fire by using you as a witness for his defense. And so you cannot afford to live this double lifestyle any longer, what you’ve been doing, the way you’ve been living, one foot in the world, one foot in the church, one foot in, one foot out. I mean, how much longer are you going to live like this? James 1.8 says the double-minded man is unstable in all of his ways. No wonder you can’t sleep at night. No wonder you can’t rest. You’re full of mental attitude sins. You’re full of the lust of the flesh. You’re full of the call of the world. You’re trying to buy happiness in all the wrong places, and it’s not ever going to happen. You are double-minded, two-sided. When will you come to your senses? This demand is placed on you by God himself. You must quit justifying your lack of effort to grow spiritually. You must quit justifying your occasional trek into the world’s opiate and the fleshly desires of pleasure. You gotta stop doing that. And that just boils down to you, no one else, you. You are the victim of your own decisions. So here’s the question I want to ask you today. Are you ready to accelerate your quest to become a spiritually mature believer regardless of age? I received a letter recently from an 81-year-old man. Here’s what he wrote. He said, I feel like I’ve wasted my life because I was never taught these principles you give. I have given 38 years of service to the church and now understand I was doing all the right things in the wrong way. So here I am. 81 years old and a baby Christian trying to study God’s word and use it in my life. I can assure you that this is not the only individual who’s reached out to me to ask for direction and encouragement. So what about you? Is this message just going one ear and out the other? Because I assure you there will be a time when your growth will be examined and you will face loss of rewards or great appreciation for the way you lived your life. 1 Corinthians 3, 11 through 15 talks about it. For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now, if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, every man’s production will become clear for the day will declare it. It will be revealed by fire and the fire will reveal each man’s work of what sort it was. If any man’s work which he’s built on endures, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved, yet as though by fire. This simply means that a lot of your right thing in the wrong way will be burned up, and the right thing in the right way will be rewardable. But even if everything you did for God is burned up, you’re still going to heaven because the foundation is not destroyed. The environment you live in is not very forgiving. And eventually, if you continue to live the lifestyle you’ve adopted, I’m telling you, you will self-destruct under your delusion and under Satan’s deceptions. So it’s really up to you. I keep on this radio show. I keep bringing this message to you. You keep listening. You keep hearing. When are you going to do something about it? I hope you’re paying attention this morning. I’m your host, Rick Hughes. I thank you for listening to The Flotline. I hope you’ll come back next week, same time, same place. Until then, I pray God’s greatest grace and mercy on your life. Thank you for listening today.

SPEAKER 02 : 27:14

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.