In this episode of The Flatline, host Rick Hughes delves into the concepts of faults and flaws. Drawing parallels between car maintenance and spiritual health, Rick explains how manufacturer flaws in our lives differ from personal faults. Through scriptural references, he highlights the importance of recognizing self-induced issues and the dangers of arrogance disguised as righteousness. Listeners are encouraged to explore their own lives for these faults and consider their impact on personal and communal spiritual growth.
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.
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Good morning, and welcome to The Flatline. I am your host, Rick Hughes, and I’d like to thank you for giving me a few minutes of your time. It’ll only be about 30 minutes of motivation, inspiration, education, without any manipulation, as our announcer said, because we don’t con people. We’re not trying to solicit funds. We’re not trying to raise money. We’re not trying to sell you anything. We just want to give you accurate information, information that I pray will help you verify and identify God’s plan for your life, and if you can do that, then maybe, just maybe, you might orient and adjust to the plan. But I would like to thank the many of you that have written to me, the many of you that have called me. Thank you so much for your correspondence. You want to talk about something today that I think will be interesting to you. You know, as I go through and pray and I try to get inspired by God, the Holy Spirit, of what to speak to you about, and you’ll be motivated to get myself to the office and get in the recording studio and record this. It’s dedicated to the Lord Jesus Christ and to his provisions for our lives. So I want to ask you a question this morning. Have you ever experienced any equipment flaw with your car, your automobile, your truck, whatever you drive? I mean, has the warning light ever come on and tell you to check your engine? I bet it has. Maybe it’s a system failure that you did not cause, but it’s simply a manufacturer flaw. It’s not something you caused. It’s something the manufacturer built in. It’s a flaw. It’s a manufacturer’s flaw. But on the other hand, now, if you fail to maintain your automobile by servicing your engine, Well, then that is indeed your fault, not a flaw. That’s your fault. It’s not a manufacturer’s flaw. So I’m going to play on these two words, fault, F-A-U-L-T-S, faults and flaws. Faults and flaws. Every Christian, every one of us, We have areas of difficulty, and most are self-induced faults that originate from frustration and failure in our lives and in things we do personally. But faults, F-A-U-L-T-S, are simply our sin nature trends. But flaws, on the other hand, F-L-A-W-S, flaws, on the other hand, can be learned or even acquired from bad information, both religious or secular. The believer with an acquired religious flaw is very dangerous because he can be self-righteous and even at times obnoxious. And this is because they are impressed with themselves. This is nothing more than a trait of arrogance called unrealistic self-image. An individual with this sort of trait has an unrealistic expectation from other people or he expects to be treated in a way that he’s not really worthy of being treated. This is a very sad thing. And about this, particularly the self-righteous religious individual, if he thinks that God is well pleased with his sort of brand of asceticism, you might not know what that is, but it’s extreme self-denial. So many people like that are, they think God’s impressed with their self-denial and they actually believe that they’re going to spend eternity in heaven based on how they live their life on this earth. And that is simply not true. You can listen to the words of our Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew 7, 21 through 23, where he said these words. Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father, which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, that’s the great white throne of judgment we’re talking about in Revelation 20. Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name? And in your name, have we not cast out devils? And in your name, we’ve done many wonderful works. And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you. What horrible words to hear. I never knew you. Depart from me, ye that work iniquity. What is iniquity? That’s self-righteous legalism, do-goodism that they think is going to get them into heaven. They think God was impressed because they didn’t drink. They think God was impressed because they didn’t cuss. They think God was impressed because they didn’t do something. The only thing that impresses God is what the Lord Jesus Christ did on the cross. So when Jesus said these words, the only people that are going to get into heaven are the ones who do the will of my Father, which is in heaven, what exactly does that refer to? Well, in John 640, it’s answered. This is the will of the one that sent me. You hear it? There it is. This is the will of the one that sent me, that everyone who seeth the Son and believeth on him may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day. To believe in the Lord Jesus Christ is the single most significant decision you’ll make. Is he the Son of God or is he not? Did he die on the cross for your sins and pay the penalty for your sin, or did he not? Was he resurrected from the dead, or was he not resurrected from the dead? What do you believe? Because your salvation is based on the person of Jesus Christ, our Savior, and on his sacrifices on that cross for the sins of the world. His resurrection from the dead is proof of God’s acceptance of that sacrifice, and it is our guarantee that you and I, we will also be resurrected. In 1 Thessalonians 4, 14, the Bible says, for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, there’s the word believe, not give up, not try, believe. If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep, In Jesus will God bring with him. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout. For the voice of the archangel and of the trump of God and the dead in Christ shall rise first. This is the exit resurrection. We call it the rapture of the church. And so you will be resurrected and get a resurrected body, and it’s an amazing body. The one we have now is a sin-infected body, and it’s decaying and dying. You know that. So you can look forward to that new body. No more pain, no more sorrow, no more tears. All the old things will be passed away. But let’s go back to this personal fault thing. Not a flaw, but a fault. The trends of the believer sin nature. Paul wrote a letter to the church at Ephesus and he warned those members in that church not to allow their sin nature trends to quench the Holy Spirit’s ministry in their lives. Let me take a look at some of these faults that he mentioned since they are things that can cause unrest and even dissension in a local church. In Ephesians 4, 30 and 31, he said, do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. And let all bitterness and all wrath and all anger and all clamor and all evil speaking be put away from among you with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you. So Paul started that by saying, don’t grieve the Holy Spirit of God. He’s reminding them that they are sealed by the Holy Spirit of God until the day that Christ returns to take them to heaven. But that’s not the filling of the Holy Spirit. The sealing of the Holy Spirit in Ephesians chapter 113 is different from the filling of the Holy Spirit. There are two different things. You are sealed with the Holy Spirit the moment you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. But you are told in Ephesians 5.18 to be filled with the Holy Spirit. What is the difference? Well, you can lose the filling, but you never lose the sealing. You’re going to heaven. You’re locked in. You’re sealed by the Holy Spirit until the day of redemption, the Bible says. But when you sin, as Paul said, don’t grieve the Holy Spirit of God. Don’t quench the Holy Spirit of God. When you allow your personal faults to surface and you sin, you break fellowship with God and you are no longer filled with the Holy Spirit. Paul gave some insight into this personal conflict in his letter to the Galatians. In Galatians 5, verses 16 and 17, here’s what he said. I say then, walk in the spirit, and then you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh, the flaws of the flesh, the faults, excuse me, the faults of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. And these are contrary one to another, so you don’t do the things you wish to do. So you have a battle. You know, some day you feel like a nut, some days you don’t. There’s two of you inside there. And the question always boils down to who are you going to let control your life? Are you going to let the sin nature with its faults control your life? Or will you allow the Holy Spirit to take control and guide you on a daily basis? These two verses in Galatians 5, 16, and 17 clearly indicate we have the potential to sin and fail spiritually if we allow our sin nature to take over our decision-making process. The issue Paul brings up is what? The flesh does not wish to submit to the leading of the Holy Spirit. It doesn’t want to do that. He goes on in Galatians 5, 19 through 21 and identifies some of the more obvious and even more obnoxious sins that Christians can commit. And then in Galatians 5, 22 and 23, he states the results of submitting to the control of the Holy Spirit who indwells you. So if we go back to that letter in Ephesians, let’s go back to that and listen now. We find him stating some of the more destructive mental attitude sins that are capable of destroying a local church’s harmony and fellowship because that’s what he’s writing to. He’s writing to the church at Ephesus. And here’s what he says. He starts off with the word bitterness. Bitterness. This sin, like the others he was now going to mention in this passage, are indications of that the Christian, the believer, has quenched and grieved the Holy Spirit. The word bitterness is a Greek word pronounced pikria. It’s spelled P-I-K-R-I-A. That’s the original manuscript, the original writing, not the English. As it was written in the original Greek New Testament, the Koine Greek language, the word bitterness is pikria. And it is a noun, and it’s a metaphor for extreme hatred. You hear me? Extreme hatred. The writer of Hebrews also warned about this sort of sin and the effects that it has. In Hebrews 12, 15, the writer of Hebrews wrote, looking carefully lest anyone fall short. of the grace of God and lest any root of bitterness, there’s your word, springing up cause trouble and by this many become defiled. Defiled is a word. It’s clear from this passage that bitterness is what? Contagious. Many become defiled, springing up. One bitter person in a local church can infect many others by spewing slander or gossip. And bitter hatred in your own personal life can actually cause you to have anxiety and depression. In current American politics, bitterness is rampant and is responsible for many criminal activities. And in the Hebrew patches, the writer tells us that many are defiled from the association with bitter people. The word defiled is very interesting. I think this is God’s wonderful sense of humor. Maybe you didn’t know God had a sense of humor, but he does look in the mirror. You figure it out. Bitterness defiles people and it’s contagious. The word defiled is the Greek word meino, M-I-A-I-N-O, meino. And that word is a word for pollution or contamination. And the best way I can explain it to you is the illustration of the Jews having to empty the bedpan in the morning. They did not have indoor plumbing. They did not have indoor toilets or bathrooms. So if someone got up in the middle of the night and had to use the restroom, they would use the bedpan. And then in the morning, the housekeeper would throw it out in the street and yell, me, I know. He did not want to step in it. So what this passage is telling us is that bitter people stink. They stink. In the next three words in that Ephesians 4 passage, we look at words called wrath, anger, and clamor. Wrath is another Greek word pronounced thumos, T-H-U-M-O-S, thumos, and it’s akin to explosive anger that boils up very quickly. This type of anger leads to a serious problem, maybe like road rage or political outburst that end in confrontation and even fighting, all because the bitterness which is your own fault has polluted your thinking. Keep in mind, this is a fault, not a flaw. It’s a fault caused by your own lack of control. And that’s your problem, not God’s problem. You decided to do that. Your volition chose to get full of anger and bitterness. And then the Bible says from bitterness and wrath, we go to anger. You watch this pattern now. We got bitterness. We got wrath. Now we got anger. And this is the Greek word orge, O-R-G-E. And this word was used for the strongest of all uncontrolled passions. Notice Paul used it in Colossians 3, 8, where he said, but now you yourselves are to put off all of these things, anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Apparently, there was a lot of bitter people in those days. They didn’t get along very well. They didn’t like each other very well. And even in the local church, you had dissension. You had problems. and you were not allowed to run or malign or slander another person. So it’s a terrible situation, people testing, and we have it today. We have it today. The third word he uses in Ephesians 4.31 is the word clamor. At all, what? Bitterness, wrath, anger, and clamor. What is clamor? What does that mean? Well, that word clamor is another Greek word pronounced krauge, K-R-A-U-G-E, krauge. That’s an onomatopoetic word, and it means to imitate the cry of a crow. A bitter person who has bitterness and anger and hatred is full of explosive anger and seething hatred will run their mouth in order to intimidate, maybe trying to malign the person they hate. They will be like the crow, crow barking in the morning, making the crow sound. That’s what a bitter person does, from one person to another, running their mouth, running people down, slandering people, the ones they hate, trying to get you to hate them also. Paul even states this in Ephesians 4.31, this type of self-induced fault leads to slander, and it’s repeating a public lie, so that if you tell it often enough, and if you tell it long enough, it’s going to be believed eventually. This is why slander spewed forth for the purpose of the next Greek word, malice, malice. And that’s the word pronounced cocky, a K a K I a cocky. Yeah. What is that? It’s the desire to hurt somebody, the desire to injure someone, the desire to harm the person that you hate. These self-induced faults are not part of the material believer’s personality profile. They never should be. But what about you? Let me ask you this question. In these times of political unrest, does this sound like anyone you know? It’s evident that there were people problems in these early churches or else Paul would not be addressing these personal faults of those in the fellowship. I mean, he brought them up. He talked about it. So they must have been having trouble. But if you want to grow spiritually, if you want to be the person that God designed you to be, it’s only going to come when you maintain the filling of the Holy Spirit and you get into a consistent intake of God’s word in your life. Why is that? Because your soul’s mentality needs to be saturated with divine viewpoint. Without this spiritual growth, you will never, you will never have a flat line in your soul. You will never be able to stop the outside systems of adversity from becoming the inside source of stress. And that’s why Paul closes this part of the letter with these wonderful words. In Ephesians chapter four, verse 32, here’s what he says. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you. Isn’t that interesting? That God forgave you because you were so evil and wicked and such a jerk? And yet you, on the other hand, are not willing to forgive people that you hate, even the politicians you can’t stand. If there’s a politician you can’t stand and you malign them, criticize them, you’re bitter and full of hatred, what makes you think it’s okay to do that? You think God doesn’t know what’s going on? This mandate in Ephesians 4.32, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you, it’s a mandate for you to use grace orientation. Living grace, dying grace, saving grace, surpassing grace. I don’t have time to go through all of it, but it’s there. God provides grace for you, and you can use impersonal love a wonderful problem solving device just like grace orientation. Grace orientation is problem solving device number four in the flat line of your soul and that impersonal love for all mankind is problem solving device number eight. So if you have the opportunity, you never have to hate anybody. You can use, you can use these problem solving devices. Isn’t it a wonderful thing? The mandate is a command to use grace orientation, forgiving one another, tenderhearted towards one another. Using grace orientation, using impersonal love when dealing with an individual, whether it’s a public person or a private person, and to forgive any wrongdoing they are up to which is exactly what god the father did for you through the imputation of your sins to the lord jesus christ while he hung on the cross oh you don’t remember that second corinthians 5 21 for he god made him christ who knew no sin to be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of god in him All of your hatred, all of your bitterness, all of your malice, he took it upon himself. He was judged in our place. That’s why it says he who knew no sin was made sin. God held no bitterness towards you before you accepted Christ as your Savior. And he demonstrated that by willingly to forgive you because he loves you. But why is it so hard for you? What’s the problem? Why is it so hard for you to forgive those whom you’re angry with? Do you place blame for our current national predicament on one particular politician? Do you believe that another person can be elected and resolve all our national issues? We’re in a mess both nationally and internationally. And it’s because of the failure of our spiritual leadership, not the failure of the politician. As prosperous Americans, many have worshipped the gifts and forgot the giver. I assure you there’s very little hunger for God’s word. And neither are most people willing to take the time to learn it. and apply the divine principles taught in the scripture into their lives, because it would guarantee their freedom in the future, I assure you. So let me remind you of the words of God through the prophet Hosea. The prophet Hosea wrote in Hosea 4, 6, a passage I’ve quoted many times on this radio show. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Lack of knowledge. Not because of their sins. Lack of knowledge. Because you rejected knowledge, I will reject you from being a priest for me. Because you forgot the laws of your God, I will forget your children. How much of the word of God do you know? You know, God said he’s looking for people. We’ve quoted it again thousands of times. People that understand him and know him. And I have told you there’s a vast difference between knowing God and understanding God. If you want to understand God, you have to acquire some knowledge, some divine viewpoint, wisdom, understanding, insight, discernment. But they’re not interested. People today are not interested. They got too much going on. They’re having too much fun, headed for the lake, headed for the mountains, headed for the beach. enjoying the gifts that the giver gives, but not remembering who the giver was. The priests that Hosea writes about here failed to teach God’s word to the people. Why? Because the people didn’t want God’s word. They were not interested. And the punishment that came upon that nation was going to be severe. You and I face the same predicament in the United States of America today. We have a mixed up, confused, negative generation who believes the problem is all about the politician, not the people, not the pastors, the politician. And that’s not true. The problem is you and me. You know, you’ve heard me talk about the fog that descended across America, failure of spiritual leadership, open rebellion in the streets, God’s word rejected, F-O-G, failure of spiritual leadership, open rebellion in the streets, God’s word rejected. That’s what’s going on. It’s not any particular politician because the Bible says, cursed is the man that trusteth in man. The issue is the spiritual life of the citizens of this country. We have neglected God’s word. We’ve neglected to learn God’s word. We’re not interested in knowledge. We’d rather be entertained. And that’s a sad state of affairs. It is my prayer that you will wake up and realize this. I want to find people that are hungry to learn God’s word. I’m looking for those of you that are listening to this radio show that will tell me, Rick, I need to learn it. I need to understand it. There’s more to it than I know I’m willing to put whatever amount of time it takes. I’m willing to find a well-qualified pastor. Show me what to do. That’s why I’m here to give you that information. I’m counting on you to respond. I’m counting on you to step up to the plate and be the person God designed you to be. Spiritual growth, mature believer, representing Jesus Christ to your generation. If not, then may God forgive us for our negligence, for our lack of interest, because that’s exactly what’s going on in this country today. All right, have you been listening? Have you learned anything? You see the difference between your flaws and your faults? Those faults destroy a church and they destroy a life. And it’s all part of it is mental attitude sins. People problems, frustration with people, hatred with people, bitterness towards people. And I recommend you to confess any sin in your life today. If you hate a politician, if you hate a neighbor, if you hate a member of your family, go to God and confess it. It will destroy you. That bitterness will destroy you if you don’t get rid of it and do exactly what God did. Love them based on his character, not our character. Okay? We’ll come back next week, same time, same place. If you have a question, contact me. Until then, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flatline.
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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.
