Castaway Believer – Part 4
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 556 aired on April 17, 2016
Good morning and welcome to The FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick Hughes and for the next few
minutes I’m inviting you to stay with me. This is our time every Sunday morning on this radio
station where we bring you 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, some education, and you
know we do this without manipulation. That says we’re not here to hustle you, we’re just here to
give you information. We’re not here to sell you anything. We’re not trying to recruit you to
anything. We’re just trying to give you accurate information. This information is designed to help
you verify as well as identify the plan of God for your life. If you can do this, then you have the
freedom and the privilege to orient and adjust to the plan. That’s what this show is about. Let me
remind you, FLOT means the forward line of troops. The premise of this radio show has always
been built upon the fact that you can establish inside your soul a forward line of troops or a main
line of resistance that will stop the outside sources of adversity from becoming the inside sources
of stress. As we’ve always said, adversity is inevitable and stress is optional. If we learn these 10
unique problem-solving devices, then we can establish this FLOT line in our soul. This is what
The FLOT Line is all about. We’re well over 500 Sundays on the air now. You can add up how
many years that is. God has been very gracious and very generous to supply our needs, to keep
us on the air, to expand our show, and we are very grateful that you’re listening today wherever
you may be. I would like to continue our brief study concerning the
Castaway Believer
that we
started three Sundays ago, so this will be the fourth lesson of this series. We started looking at
the passage in 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 where Paul was talking to the church at Corinth and the
believers who had gotten distracted by the many details associated with life. He had to write
back to them after he had arrived in Ephesus and heard about what was now going on. There was
a lot of trouble in Corinth. He wrote using this athletic metaphor to explain how they must be
temperate in all things, this means self-discipline, and how they must press on toward the prize
or the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. He was using something they were all
familiar with, the Isthmian games. They were practiced in Corinth and these people that came to
the Isthmian games observed them and so when Paul gave this athletic metaphor, this made a lot
of sense. He said in this metaphor that after he had preached to others, it was very dangerous
because he could in fact become a castaway if he didn’t keep after himself. Let’s go back to last
Sunday for a minute. He said he brings his body into subjection. He said,
“I make it my slave,”
my
doulagogeo
and this is from the compound word
doulos
and
ago
which means to lead. He
leads his body. He makes his body his slave. We talked last week about volition and I said that
God has given you volition as part of the format of your soul. You can either say yes or you can
say no, God gives you the option to do this.
If you are going to glorify Jesus Christ in your
life, you must learn to take control of your volition. You must learn not to let the sin nature
control your life. You cannot give in to the desires of the flesh, follow the distractions of the
world or buy into the deceptions of Satan. You must have a Biblical foundation in your soul
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that allows your volition to see its choices and to see its options.
The only way you’re ever
going to get this foundation is to number one, stay filled with the Holy Spirit, and number two,
grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The only way you’re
ever going to grow is to sit under the authority of a well-qualified pastor. Ephesians 4:13 talks
about this,
“Until we all come to the unity of the faith,”
until we all become mature grown
believers. In other words God wants you to grow up. He wants me to grow up. He wants us to be
mature believers so that we can then replicate the life of Christ, so that when our friends see us,
they see Christ in us. The only way we can do this is to subdue the passions of the flesh or the sin
nature. I want to throw this at you today, I want you to think about this.
Paul said in 1
Corinthians 9:37,
“Lest after having been a herald to others, I myself could be set aside.”
This
is the word
kerusso
. It’s a proclaimer of the truth, a herald. It’s a person who publishes divine
truth and by the way, this is part of the responsibility of the client nation. The client nation that
we live in is called the United States of America and part of what God asks us to do in return for
the way He’s blessed us is to publish His Word, to publish truth.
If there’s anything that Satan
would like, it is to stop the United States of America from publishing the truth of the
gospel
. I don’t know if you’re aware of this but even when we went to war in Afghanistan, our
troops were not allowed to carry Bibles. We were not allowed to evangelize the people that we
helped defeat, the enemy, for fear that we would be imposing on their rights. We cannot
evangelize the people of the world because we can’t even evangelize our own people in many
public agendas. We can’t evangelize people in public schools. It’s against the law nowadays to
talk about Jesus Christ in a public forum, in a public arena. We can’t evangelize our own people
and we cannot evangelize those overseas, then why is God blessing us? Why is He keeping us
around? If He can’t use us, is it possible that the client nation could be set aside? The answer is
absolutely. Listen to what Romans 10:14 says,
“How shall they call on Him in whom they have
not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall
they hear unless one proclaim it?”
There it is, it’s pretty simple. They are led to believe, but they
cannot believe if they don’t hear, and they cannot hear if someone doesn’t proclaim it. There must
be a person. There must be a message. There must be a hearing and there must be a response.
Your job and my job as believers in Jesus Christ is that anytime, any day, anywhere, we offer
people a hearing so that they know what their options are.
In 1 Corinthians 9:23 Paul said,
“I
do all things for the sake of the gospel so that I may become a fellow partaker of it.”
It’s not
just my job to do this on the radio, it’s my job to do this in my personal life and your job also.
This is why God left us here. We are His ambassadors. We are His priests. We are His
proclaimers.
God left us here to be the proclaimers of the truth.
As a believer in the Church
Age, we’re not in the Old Testament, we’re in the New Testament, the Church Age, and we have
a task. This task is to be a proclaimer of the good news. The gospel is the good news. The
message is the good news and we are to announce the message. The good news is you don’t have
to pay for your sin, it’s already been paid for. Someone has taken your place. Someone has given
you a free ticket to heaven if you will accept the ticket, if you will believe in Jesus Christ and
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receive Him as your Savior. He has already paid the penalty. He’s already paid the cost. He died
for us in our place and the reason he did it?
“God so loved the world”
(John 3:16), He loves you.
He loved us. He knew that we could not pay it ourselves because there is no righteousness in us.
“There are none that are righteous, no not one,”
Romans 3:10 is clear about this. How can we
pay for our own sin? We can’t do it so the good news is that Jesus Christ, the anointed Son of
God, has victory over sin and death. In Hebrews 2:14-15, He’s removed the fear of death by
means of the resurrection.
The fact that Jesus Christ walked out of the grave alive is a
guarantee to us that when we leave this body, when our soul and our spirit depart from this
corrupted body, we will be face-to-face with the Lord.
Make no mistake about it, you will
leave this body. This body will not work in heaven, it won’t function in heaven. We must have a
different body and that’s called the resurrection body. That’s a body like the body of our Savior.
So we are to announce the good news. We are to proclaim the good news, the victory over sin
and death. It is a gift of God and this is not something that we earn or are rewarded with. The
good news is a gift, God has a gift for you. Do you know people today that might need the gift?
Do you not have people that you associate with everyday, family members, grandchildren,
associates that you work with, people that you come in contact with, that would ask you, “Can
you give me a gift that is more valuable than anything in the world?” There is nothing more
valuable than their soul. If you can tell them how their soul can live forever in the presence of
God and it’s free, they can’t earn it, they can’t buy it, they just have to accept it, why would you
not tell them? Why would you be afraid to tell them? Don’t you know they want the gift, they
want to hear the good news? The heart of the gospel, the good news, is 1 Corinthians 15:3-5,
“For I passed on to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins
according to the Scriptures and that He was buried and that He was raised on the third day
according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.”
Yes, Jesus
Christ our Lord walked out of the grave alive, after three days, alive. He appeared to Peter and to
others, they all saw Him and He’s alive today. Thus Paul wrote in Romans 1:16,
“I am not
ashamed of the gospel. It is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes it, to the
Jew first and then to the Gentile.”
Are you ashamed of the gospel? Would you be ashamed to
speak to someone about the greatest gift the world has ever known? Would you actually be
embarrassed to talk to a stranger about the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord?
Why? Don’t you realize that many people would love the gift, that it’s more valuable than
winning any lottery? What you win in the lottery stays here on this earth but what you gain
through believing in Jesus Christ is an eternal reward. It’s life everlasting,
“No more pain, no
more sorrow, no more tears”
(Revelation 21:4).
“The old things are passed away and all things
become new”
(2 Corinthians 5:17). Who wouldn’t want this? So why would you be ashamed to
tell him about this?
Never be ashamed of the gospel.
Paul said,
“I am not ashamed of the
gospel. It is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes it, to the Jew first and then
to the Gentile.”
You have in your possession the single most powerful words or the single most
powerful weapon in the history of the entire universe, that is the ability to deliver someone from
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hell.
If you fail to proclaim the good news, you are failing to fulfill the mission that God left
you here do do.
He left you here to do this very thing. He left you here to be a witness of His
Son Jesus Christ. When you fail to proclaim, then you set yourself up to be set aside where God
can use someone that will do it. Paul used the word
adokimos
in the Greek New Testament
meaning to set aside, a castaway. This means a person who does not stand the test. This word is
used in a lot of ways in the Bible. In 1 Corinthians 9:27 this word is used for a castaway but if
you go to 2 Corinthians 13:7 it’s translated unapproved. If you go to 2 Timothy 3:8 it’s translated
rejected. If you go to Titus 1:16 it’s translated worthless.
The word for castaway is translated
many different ways but what it means is disqualified or rejected with the loss of future
reward.
Wow, do you want to lose future reward? Do you want to be set aside because God
cannot count on you or depend on you to be the proclaimer of the good news? Then you need to
examine yourself. You need to test your priorities. Listen to this passage in 2 Corinthians 13:5,
“Test yourself,”
Paul wrote back to these folks at Corinth. They were asking him, was he really
legitimate? “Can we really trust you? Are you really who you say you are?” He said,
“Test
yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this
about yourself that Jesus Christ is in you, unless indeed you fail the test?”
These people were
demanding proof of Paul’s authority that Jesus Christ was speaking through him and he said,
“You look at your own hearts.” We have two imperatives here in the Greek New Testament. The
imperative of test yourself and examine yourself, two different words,
peirazo
and
dokimazo.
Both of them are imperative commands in the Greek New Testament, the objective evaluation of
your salvation. First of all test yourself. Are you going to heaven? This is a fair question to ask.
It’s a test. Why would you go to heaven? If I ask you to answer this test, write on a piece of
paper, “Why are you going to heaven?” You should be able to write these words. “Because I
believe that Jesus Christ is the anointed Son of God.” That’s the only correct answer. Oh, I know,
you don’t smoke and you don’t drink and you don’t chew and you don’t hang out with those that
do. You don’t use naughty words and you don’t go to naughty places and thus you know that God
must really like you because you’re really a nice person. That’s not true. God loves you not
because of what you do but because of who He is. He loves you with impersonal love. If you
want to test something, first of all test your own faith. Are you in the royal family of God? Have
you had faith alone in Christ alone? Then when he says
“Examine yourselves,”
dokimazo,
means
to do some self-examination, scrutinize your own life, this is what he’s telling them. In 1
Corinthians 10:13, we are told that God allows us to be tested and when He does this, this testing
is always for our betterment. God says, “If He allows us to be tested, He’s not going to put too
much on us and He always provides a way out,” so now Paul tells these people to test
themselves. How would you test yourself? Do you have any idea how you could test yourself?
Well, 1 Corinthians 11:28 say this,
“Let a man examine himself
[the same word that Paul used
earlier, self-examination,
dokimazo
]
and in doing so, then he is to eat of the bread and drink of
the cup.”
Every time you take communion you are testing yourself. You are testing what you
know. If you know what the bread is about and if you know what the cup is about, then you’re
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going to pass the test but if you take the bread and the cup out of fellowship, then you’re going to
get under tremendous discipline as 1 Corinthians 11:29-30 tells you. Let me ask you this
question. When you put that wafer in your mouth, do you know anything about what you’re
doing? Do you know that it represents undiminished deity, true humanity in one body forever
called hypostatic union? Do you know that wafer represents the celebrityship of Christ and that
He is King of kings and Lord of lords? Do you know that wafer represents the virgin birth? Do
you know that wafer represents impeccability? He never sinned, He was the perfect Lamb of
God without spot, without blemish that takes away the sin of the world. When you put that wafer
in your mouth you are suppose to remember these doctrines. You scroll them through your head
to see what you remember, that’s a test. Then when you take the cup and drink it, you’re
remembering the blood, the spiritual death of Christ on the cross, how He took our place,
redeemed us out of the slave market of sin, how our sins were imputed to Him and His
righteousness is imputed to us, how we were propitiated, how God was satisfied. All of these
things are part of the test. So Galatians 6:3-4 says,
“If anyone thinks he is something when he is
really nothing, he deceives himself. But every one must examine his own work and then he will
have reason to boast in regard to himself alone and not in regard to another person.”
We are
never to compare ourselves to another believe
r. Let’s go back to this, volition, positive or
negative; sin nature trends, trend toward lasciviousness or trend toward legalism.
If you
have a trend toward legalism then you’re going to think that God likes you because you don’t do
what the lascivious person does. You saw his car parked at the bar. You know he was out
barhopping and chasing and you’re thinking this when you are in church. You’re thinking you
are where you should be and God really likes you because you didn’t do that. On the other hand,
maybe you did malign and complain about someone you had a business affair with. Maybe you
did argue and fuss with your wife. Maybe you did a lot of different things. Maybe you’re full of
mental attitude sins and the sins of self-righteousness. Maybe you think God likes you because
you don’t do what the lascivious person does and you compare yourself to them. You need to
read Luke 15:11-32 about the Prodigal Son who came home and confessed his sin to his father
and the older son who was angry about it, who actually in reality was Mr. Self-Righteousness.
This is why Romans 12:3 says,
“Stop thinking of yourself in terms of arrogance.”
Do you realize
the greatness of your relationship with the God of the universe? Do you realize how special you
are?
Listen to 1 Corinthians 6:19-20.
“Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy
Spirit who is in you, who you have from God, and you are not your own? For you have been
bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body.”
Here’s a simple principle to remember.
The supernatural blessings and the supernatural privileges you have as a member of the
royal family of God do not guarantee supernatural success. You must decide to run the
race, to follow the rules, to stay on the course, to complete the mission
. 1 Corinthians
3:16-17,
“Do you not know you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If
any man defiles the temple of God, him shall God destroy, for the temple of God is holy and you
are the temple.”
In God’s plan a mature believer, a believer who replicates the life of Christ, is
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much more important, much more influential, much more impactful than any Hollywood movie
star. This is why you must finish the race. You are more important than any military genius. You
are more important than any political genius because you have an international impact as a
mature believer. Romans 8:13 warns you,
“If you are living according to the flesh, you must die;
but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you shall live.”
This is you
using your volition, using self-discipline, to deny the flesh the right to control your life.
Whatever the lust pattern of your flesh is, and we all have them, you must use your volition to
say, “No, I’m not letting you control my life.” This is critical. This is running the race. This is
fulfilling the rules. If you inventory your very own spiritual life you could discern some things
here. Here’s a question before we wrap it up today. Do you understand the protocol plan of God?
Do you understand what true spirituality is? Do you understand the difference between human
good and divine good? Do you know the difference between divine viewpoint and human
viewpoint? Do you know how to tell if you are filled with the Holy Spirit? Can you tell that
you’re growing spiritually? Going back to 2 Corinthians 13:5-6,
“Do you not recognize this
about yourself that Jesus Christ is in you unless indeed you fail the test? But I trust you will
realize that we ourselves don’t fail the test.”
He wants to be approved and he wants you to be
approved. He admonishes those carnal Corinthians who have an unrealistic self-image and those
who questioned his authority.
The authority of the Word of God is all we need.
We give it to
you every Sunday, straight up, no games, no gimmicks.
You must stay filled with the Spirit.
You must grow in grace. You must sit under a well-qualified pastor so you can learn and
grow.
Are you listening? Are you responding? Are you ready to do something about this before
God has to set you aside and find somebody that will? The time is now. Your life and my life are
running out of time.
We must make some critical decisions. As Joshua said,
“As for me and
my house, we will serve the Lord”
(Joshua 24:15).
I hope you’re listening. I hope you’re paying
attention. It’s critical that you do, your very life is at stake. Until next week this is your host Rick
Hughes saying thank you for listening to The FLOT Line