This episode challenges listeners to deal head-on with the pervasive culture of complaining and arguing that has entrenched many spiritual lives into a path of retrogression. Rick discusses the spiritual warnings in constant complaining and the importance of standing as virtuous lights amidst a crooked and perverse generation. Drawing insights from Scripture, Rick equips believers to become lighthouses of hope and righteousness, drawing others to the unwavering harbor of God’s truth.
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 02 :
Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, stick around. It’ll be 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, some education, and no, no, no manipulation, no con games, not asking for any money. If this is your first time to hear this show, don’t worry about that. We’re not going to try to solicit anything. We’re not going to try to get you to join anything. We just want to give you some accurate information, information that’ll help you verify and identify the plan of God for your life if you’re interested. And if you are, then you can orient and adjust to the plan according to what you hear. But I’m an evangelist, and my job is to give you some accurate information. Excuse me just a minute. I think I swallowed a bug. That tastes good too. I’m to give you some accurate information, so hang with me. And by the way, this is show 915. That many Sundays we’ve been on the air, and I’m not a one-man show. It takes a lot of people to put this together. I mean, we have Phil in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We have Judy in Houston, Texas. We have Melody in College Station. We have people all over the place that help us do these things. Put them all together for you, not only on the radio, but also on the podcast where we podcast the same radio shows. on podcast venues like Apple iPod or Spotify or Breaker or Anchor. And we’ve recently gone over one million downloads. One million people have heard the Flatline on these various podcast venues. So thank you for listening. Yeah, we don’t ask for money. We don’t solicit funds because we believe if God’s in it, God will pay for it. So let’s just jump into what we want to talk about today. I’d like to talk to you about your testimony, about the way you live your life, about what God expects out of you and how you’re to act. This is going to be kind of a tough message. I hope you hang with me and not get frustrated. Remember, before I can teach it to you, I’ve got to teach it to myself. This is Philippians 2, 14 and 15, our testimony, how we are supposed to live our lives. Do all things without complaining or arguments, so that you will prove yourself to be blameless and innocent children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world. This passage gives specific instructions on how you are to live your Christian life. Interesting, the word do, D-O, is a little small word pronounced P-O-I-O, P-O-I-E-H-O, P-O-I-E-O, we pronounce it that way. It’s spelled P-O-I-E-O, P-O-I-E-O. It’s a verb. Do is a verb. And in the English, in the Greek morphology, it’s the imperative mood verb. It’s not a request. It’s what we call a present active imperative. Now that means the present tense is there is a time when you are not to do this. You are to always do this. Present tense, continue to do this. The active voice says you produce the action, your volition, and the imperative mood is the mood of command. This is a mandate from God. Do these things. What I’m about to read to you, it’s not simply a request. He’s telling you, do these things. When you fail to obey this mandate of do, you are committing a sin. Sometimes people think sin is just the big stuff. Don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t chew, don’t run around with those that do. But there’s a lot more to sin than you realize sometimes. And sin is always disobedience. And anytime you have an imperative mood, a mandate in the Greek New Testament, when you disobey that mandate, you’re sinning because you’ve been commanded by God, do this. So what am I supposed to do? What’s this verse tell me I’m supposed to do? It says I’m to do all things. All things. What in the world does that mean? The Greek word for all things is posse. And it’s used other passages too. For example, in Romans 11, 36, for of him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory forever and ever, amen. All things refers to whatever you do. If you’re a husband, it means whatever you do as a husband. If you’re a father, whatever you do as a father. If you’re a mother, whatever you do as a mom, in marriage, in school, in work, in church, makes no difference. All things, or anything, means whatever you do. And all things, whatever you do, sounds simple enough, but if you add the pressure of time and the pressure of circumstances, and it’s usually a given, you’re gonna complain about it. And so that’s what this verse is telling us. In all things, do not complain. That’s the sin nature’s number one pop-off vow, complaining, griping, complaining. I heard a phrase coined years ago that I thought was cute. It’s called gritching. Figure that one out. It’s two words put together. That’s what a complainer does. As a matter of fact, have you ever met a person who did not complain? Kind of hard to come by, aren’t they? Complain about the way they’re treated. Complain about their taxes. Complain about the politicians. Complain about this, that, the other thing. Complain about the line at the grocery store. Complain about the cost of eggs. Complain about the automobile repair. We love to complain. We are a nation of complainers. And the Bible tells you don’t complain. Don’t gripe. The adverb live your life without complaining. This is an interesting word. It means to be displeasing. The adverb chorus, C-H-O-R-I-S, along with the noun gongousmos, which means displeasure, not openly avowed, muttering under your breath. So do all things without muttering under your breath. Do all things without openly complaining. What about you? Have you complained this week? Did you complain to your spouse? Did you complain to your kids? Did you complain to your boss? Did you complain to your neighbor? Have you complained today? Well, this complaining is a type of bitterness and it indicates that you believe you got mistreated. Yes. Bless your heart. You got mistreated and uh, you were not respected. And all people, including you and me, any of us who complain habitually, usually are pretty bitter people. And I’ve known some like this. I bet you have too. You couldn’t make them happy if you gave them a million dollars. They’d complain about it. Because they’re bitter. They’re empty. But if you complain about anything, then you are complaining about things that God knew of in eternity past. So why are you complaining? If God knew about it and God allowed it to happen, the Bible says all things work together for good to them that love the Lord. That’s the key to it right there, them that love the Lord. Virtue love is important in that passage. Do you love the Lord? 1 John 5, 3 says, if you love me, you’ll obey me, and my mandates are not grievous. That’s the proof that you love him, obedience. and walking by faith, because the Bible says without faith it’s impossible to please God. So this complaining, this bitterness, we’re complaining about things God knew about in eternity past, and why? I’ll tell you why, because you’re not applying the doctrine of God’s knowledge to that situation. God was in business before you got here, and he’ll be in business when you’re gone. He knows what’s going on. He’s omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. He can handle the circumstances, and the Bible tells you, don’t think it’s strange that these things happen to you. God’s gonna give you a way out, don’t worry. But you complain, complain about everything. This complaining attitude is a sign of retrogression in the spiritual life, not advancement. Retrogression. Complaining, two, let’s do this in numbers. One, complaining attitude is a sign of retrogression in the spiritual life. Two, complaining is a warning sign that all is not well in our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. We’re whining, we’re complaining. Three, complaining means we’ve forgotten the unfailing love of God who has not forgotten us. He didn’t throw you under the bus. He didn’t abandon us. And four, when we forget about that unfailing love of God, then we cannot serve the Lord with superabundance of happiness as the Bible tells us to do. In Psalm 100, verse two, continue serving the Lord with a superabundance of happiness. You’re not very happy when you’re complaining, when you’re griping, moaning, Complaining and serving the Lord with a super abundance of happiness are mutually exclusive. You can’t do it. You can’t serve the Lord if you’re constantly in a bad mood, feeling like you got disrespected and mistreated, and you’re looking for somebody. Let me call up my friend and tell him what happened to me. Let me call my neighbor across the street and tell him what happened to me. Complaining. When believers are arrogant, whining, complaining, falling apart for all kinds of reasons, that’s a sign that They have no personal sense of destiny. Problem-solving device number six in the flatline of your soul. Do you know what that is? If you don’t, get the book. We got it. Christian Problem-Solving. We’ll be glad to send you one free of charge. All of these flatline 10 problem-solving devices are in that book. You can simply go to the website, rickhughesministries.org. rickhughesministries.org, not Richard Hughes, that’s somebody else, rickhughesministries.org, and order the book, Christian Problem Solving, and study and read about personal sense of destiny, what that means. So if you complain and whine, fall apart all the time, means you don’t have a personal sense of destiny. And it says, don’t complain and don’t argue. Do all things without complaining or arguing. And this word for arguing is delegizmos, delegizmos. Delegizmos. And according to those that are smarter than me, according to Volver and Zuck, Dallas Seminary faculty members, arguing reflects sort of a legal connotation of disputing, and it might refer, at least in part, to the practice of going to civil court to settle a difference. Have you ever been to court? Have you ever sued anybody? You’ve been involved in a lawsuit? What does the Bible say about that? In 1 Corinthians 6, 1 through 20, does any one of you, when he has a case against his neighbor, dare to go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? If the world is judged by you, are you not competent to form the smallest law courts? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more matters of this life? So if you have law courts dealing with matters of this life, do you appoint them as a judge who have no account in the church? I say this to your shame. Is it so that there’s not among you at least one wise person who could decide between his brothers and sisters? But brother goes to law with brother and that before the unbeliever. Actually then, it’s already a defeat for you that you have lawsuits against one another. Why not rather suffer the wrong and why not rather be defrauded? On the contrary, you yourself do no wrong and you defraud. And this to your brothers and sisters. I can tell you what that’s selling you. Stay out of court. Quit suing people. Don’t do that. There’s a better way to live. Let the Supreme Court of God handle it. You got defrauded, you got mistreated, you got whatever. Stay out of the law. If you’re a Christian, one of the things we try to do is stay out of lawsuits. Why? Why should I stay out of a lawsuit? Well, the verse goes on to say, so that. So that you will prove yourself. So that is a purpose clause indicating why you should avoid complaining and arguing. Prove yourself is a subjunctive mood verb Maybe you will and maybe you won’t. It depends on your volition. It depends on what you do so that you can prove yourself, meaning what manner of person you’re seeking to become before God and before man. So don’t argue. Don’t complain so you can prove yourself before God and man to be blameless and innocent. The word blameless means not deserving of censorship. free of fault free of blame you know like our lord was in john 8 46 he said to the religious crowd which one of you convicts me of a sin if i speak truth why do you not believe me he was blameless our lord never sinned in his entire existence on this planet earth true humanity undiminished deity true humanity in one body forever and in human human body He never sinned. That’s what made him qualified to go to the cross to pay for our sins. He was the innocent lamb of God without spot and without blemish that takes away the sin of the world. Thank goodness for us he did that. So that you can prove yourself blameless, free of fault, and innocent, which means free from guile, which means harmless, which means you don’t have some hidden private agenda that you’re trying to pull the wool over somebody’s eyes or you’re trying to get something accomplished. I mean, this goes on every day. Even in churches, deacons that have private agendas, members that have private agendas, you might have run into it. And they meet in private and they sneak around and try to plan things out. And you get this in local government and federal government as well. I mean, there’s no doubt about the federal government today has an agenda. They don’t want you to know what it is, but it is to remake America into a socialist humanistic state. I can tell you that doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. We are where we are today over many years of neglecting God’s word. We kept God out of the public venue many years ago. And it’s taken many years to get to this point where everything that is evil is now really okay. And everything that used to be good is now really evil. We’re in trouble, big, big trouble. You need to be blameless and innocent. Innocent, free from guile, no private agenda. You need to be, this verse says, a son of God without rebuke. Amomitas, amomitas, without rebuke. It means one that cannot be censored or one that’s unblameable. That’s the way your lifestyle has to be. You have to be that sort of person that when a bunch of guys are meeting together for coffee, they talk about you, they say, well, I can tell you what, I can’t find one thing bad about that guy. He’s honorable, he’s great, he’s unbelievable, and never lied, never mistreated me, Never did this, never did that. That’s what you want to be. You want to be innocent, blameless, innocent, free from guile, harmless. That means you don’t want to have a private agenda. And you want to be a son of God, this verse says, a son of God without reproof, without rebuke. That means that one that cannot be censored. in the middle of a crooked and a perverse generation. Oh me, that sounds like America, doesn’t it? Crooked and perverse generation. I could go on a rant here about the crookedness across this country and the hidden agendas across this country and the pervertedness across this country. If I told you what’s going on, you might be shocked if you’re not aware of it. But the word crooked is an adjective, skalios is the Greek word, skalios, and it’s used for what is morally crooked. Crooked, not straight, not innocent, not blameless, crooked. And perverse, diastrepho, diastrepho is the Greek word. It means corrupted and perverted. And then we’re a generation. That group of individuals who are similar in character pursue in a bad sense. So we have a generation of young people coming up in America today. Some of them are wonderful people. Some of them are not so wonderful. Some of them would just soon take a gun and shoot you and laugh about it. As a matter of fact, there are certain parts of your community probably, where I live, it’s true too, in the big cities, you best not be in there at night or you’ll get shot at. People don’t care. People have no guilt anymore. People have lost all sense of guilt. They have no fear of the police officer. People are perverted in their perversions. With the internet porn addiction that goes around, perversion is abundant. perverted, crooked generation. That’s America, in some extent. Not completely, but in some extent. Is it gonna change? I don’t see it changing. Took a lot of years to get here, and it’s gonna take a lot of years to get out of it. But this generation, we’re in big, serious trouble, because this generation of young people are going to be your leaders of tomorrow. Now fortunately, I do speak at a lot of schools, talking to young people, And a lot of the ones that I speak in are private academies, not public schools. They won’t let me talk in a public school. Why? Because I’m going to talk about God. Can’t have that. But private schools, not Christian, just private academies, still encourage their kids to learn about God’s word. And I find a lot of squared away, wonderful students in those sorts of institutions. So they’re not crooked and they’re not perverse. They’re a great generation. And the Bible says we are to shine as lights in the world. Lights in the world. Paul wrote that and it was a tough time living in Philippi where he ministered there in Philippi. Basically a little miniature Rome is what it was. There probably were only about 15,000 people there and most of them were slaves but a lot of Roman soldiers retired there and given land grants. So they had a lot of former military personnel. As a matter of fact, there were not even enough men to form a synagogue. Did you know that? How do I know that? But according to Jewish tradition, the Mishnah, 10 Jewish men were required to form a synagogue. Thus it would seem there were not enough Jews in Philippi to meet even this minimum threshold. In fact, Luke goes out of his way to emphasize that Paul and his companions spoke to the women who had assembled alongside the river. Acts 16, 13. And Lydia, same name as my wife, Lydia, the woman is singled out as the initial convert, and she’s identified as a worshiper of God, a Gentile worshiper of God, Yahweh. So Paul, when he went to Philippi and had a tremendous ministry there, converting people, leading them to Christ, got in big, big trouble because he took with him a man named Silas and they converted a fortune teller. And her conversion cost her handlers a lot of money because she quit doing what they wanted her to do. And they arrested Paul, beat him, threw him into jail. Paul and Silas put him in jail. Warren tried to get rid of him. And in Acts 16, 12 through 40, eventually they were delivered by God by an earthquake and eventually left town after seeing the Roman jailer and his entire family get saved who witnessed this. So how does this passage apply to you? What are we talking about? Well, you are being observed 24-7. Did you know that? God is watching you. Proverbs 15, 3, the eyes of the Lord are in every place watching the evil and the good. I mean, you can turn the lights off at night and pull the cover over your head and the Lord still can read your thoughts. He’s watching you. He knows what you’re thinking and he knows what you’re doing. And if you’re being crooked and dishonorable, he knows that. If you’re a Christian, I would advise you to confess that sin and get out of it quickly before the hammer of God falls on your head. I knew a man at one time who was a believer, a great believer. He’s still alive. Unfortunately, he’s in prison because he misled people. Should have gotten out of that, should have confessed that sin, should have paid it back, but he didn’t. It cost him the rest of his life in prison. You may be like that yourself. You need to get out of that dishonesty. You’re being watched by God and you’re not gonna get away with it. And the Bible tells you that angels observe you also in Luke 15 10. In the same way, I tell you that there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who changes his mind. They’re watching and anytime someone accepts Christ as a savior, there’s a party in heaven. Joy, a big hoorah, yay. That’s amazing, isn’t it? The angels rejoice over one person getting saved. And you know who else is watching you? Satan. He’s got his eyes on you. Job 1, 7 through 12 talks about it, how he was watching Job and accused God of favoring Job. Said the only reason Job worships you is you put a hedge around him. And the Lord said, that’s not true. Read it for yourself. Job 1, 7 through 12. Yep, God’s watching you, the angels observe you, Satan observes you, and other people are watching you, even other believers. They’re watching the way you handle things. 1 Thessalonians 5, 14, we urge you, brothers and sisters, admonish those that are being unruly and encourage the faint-hearted and help the weak and be patient with everyone. I mean, how would they know these things if they weren’t watching? And I tell you who else is watching you, the lost person. The lost person is looking at you, and you are the only Bible he will ever read. The testimony of your life in 2 Corinthians 3 says you are a letter from the Lord Jesus Christ to the lost world. You are. The significance in your life and in their life is that you have totally different attitudes. You don’t complain about adverse circumstances. You don’t take people to court trying to make a fast buck. You’re beyond blame. You’re beyond suspicion, and you are harmless. Your lifestyle is Christ, actually, like a beacon. You know, the Bible says you are light to the world. It’s like a beacon on a dark night, like that lighthouse flashing around and around and around. You are the light. Listen, a beacon has to have power to generate it, and that’s you, the filling of the Holy Spirit. When you’re filled with the Holy Spirit, your light can shine. What does the light consist of? The Word of God. The attractiveness of the Word of God. The Word of God is safe harbor. The Word of God is attractive to those who are looking to salvation. You’re living in the middle of a crooked and a perverse generation, and you’re not part of it. You are a beacon. You are a lighthouse. You are calling the lost to security and safety. You are a replica of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. You are loving, you are forgiving, you are compassionate, you are caring, all of the things that he was, you are. And when you are that person, the lost will be attracted to you, although sometimes they will resent you, there’s no doubt about that, but primarily they will be attracted to you for safe harbor. That’s what Paul tells you you are to be. That’s your Christian testimony. Do all things without complaining, without arguing, so that you will prove yourself to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the middle of a crooked and a perverse generation among whom you shine, who you appear as the lights of the world. That’s what God expects out of you. Let your light shine. It can’t shine if you don’t have the word of God because that’s the light. And it can’t work if you don’t have the internal power of the filling of the Holy Spirit. So keep that in mind, the lighthouse must have power, generate power, that’s the Holy Spirit. And the beacon goes out, that’s the word of God. And that attracts people to safety. You listening? Are you paying attention? Because this is for you. I mean, this message is for you today. I hope you’ve been listening, I hope you’ve been paying attention, and I hope you’ll contact me if you have a question. rickhughesministries.org, rickhughesministries.org, or you can call us at 800-831-0718. But we’re not counselors. We are Bible teachers. And I’m just an appetizer. The real meat of the message is the pastor teacher you must get under, the man that can serve you the best meal. I hope you’ll pray about that, and I hope you’ll look for that man. If you can’t find him, let me know. I’ll direct you in the right direction where you can find good, solid, sound Bible teaching. So until next week, this is Rick Hughes saying thank you for listening to The Flatline.
SPEAKER 01 :
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.
