Join host Rick Hughes as he delves into the pivotal theme of divine discipline on The Flatline. This episode explores how spiritual chastening serves as an essential part of personal growth and alignment with God’s plan for each believer. Through passages in Hebrews, Rick discusses the various forms of discipline, from gentle nudges to intense trials, all aimed at guiding us back to righteousness. With his compelling narrative, Rick emphasizes the importance of humility and confession as tools to navigate spiritual challenges effectively.
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’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next 30 minutes, please stay with me. It’ll be about 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, a whole lot of education, and And absolutely no manipulation because we don’t do any type of games here. We’re not trying to raise money. We’re not trying to sell you a product. We’re just offering you information from the scriptures, from the word of God, hoping that we’ll be able to verify and identify God’s plan for your life. And if we can do that, then hopefully you will be smart enough to orient and adjust to the plan. Because remember, God gave you two ends. One end you think with and one end you sit on, and success in your life is going to depend on which one of those you use. As they say, heads you win and tails you lose. So please pay attention this morning. It’s a critical message I want to give you this morning, very important. And let me remind you of our website, rickhughesministries.org. rickhughesministries.org. If you’d like to contact us, you can go there and order any of our free books. You can listen to the books read online. You can send an email from there. You can request various videos from there. So it’s all free. Go to the website, rickhughesministries.org or call 800- 831-0718. Okay, now here’s what we want to talk about today. We’re well into the new year, 2025. Hello, 2025. Can you believe you’re still alive in 2025? You probably never would have thought it, but it’s true, and here you are. And so we’ve got to take a look at this today. This is something that’s not fun to teach, but it must be taught, must be brought forth, and you must understand it. We’re going to talk about divine discipline, divine discipline. And I want to read to you a passage out of Hebrews chapter 12, Hebrews 12, 5 through 11, and let me read it to you carefully. And have you forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons? My son, this is family members now, the son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by him. For whom the Lord loves, he chastens and scourges every son whom he receives. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with a son. For what son is there whom the father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, that’s a discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not a son. Furthermore, we have had human fathers. This is important. Listen to this now. Verse 9, chapter 12, Hebrews. Furthermore, we’ve had human fathers which corrected us and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? And live. For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seems best to them, but he, for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness. Now, no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful nevertheless. But afterwards, it yields peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who’ve been trained by it. Couple of words we wanna look at in that passage. One of the first words, do not despise the chastening of the Lord. Chastening is the Greek word paideia, P-A-I-D-E-I-A, paideia. That’s the Greek word for chastening, the English word. And it’s a word used for training a child. It includes instruction and correction that regulates the character of the young individual. It said, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor don’t be discouraged when you’re rebuked by him. Rebuked means to be convicted or to refute, usually with the suggestion of putting the convicted person to shame. But we have that challenge in the first part of that verse, do not despise. Do not despise. That’s a present active imperative verb in the Greek New Testament, oligoreo, oligoreo. And it means this, don’t ignore it and don’t think little of it. Don’t pay no attention to it. In other words, it’s a warning to you. Don’t despise the chastening of the Lord when it comes into your life. All right? Grab a hold of that and listen very carefully now because it’s important that we get this straight. Point one, warning discipline is much like a warning light going off in your automobile. It’s designed to warn you that you’re about to have a major problem. And that’s what this chastening is, it’s warning discipline. Warning discipline, point two, does not usually include pain, but rather something that will draw your attention as a message coming from God. It could be a billboard, it could be a song, it could be a message from a preacher. but it’s something that’ll draw your attention to what you’re doing so you’ll realize that you’re out of line. Three, warning discipline is God’s way of gently letting you know he’s aware of your carnal behavior. How could he be aware of that? Proverbs 5, 21. For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord and he ponders all his past. So there’s nothing you will ever do or nothing you can do that God is not aware of because of his omniscience. Point four, divine discipline starts with chastening. It’s a mild, gentle nudge to cause you to correct your behavior. Six, you must remember that all sin quenches the ministry of the Holy Spirit in your life. Thus, it shuts down the function of your spiritual life. So the very moment you commit that particular sin, whatever sin it may be, the Holy Spirit is quenched and grieved in your life and your spiritual life is immediately shut down. Ephesians 4.30 tells you, do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed until the day of redemption. Another verb is a present active imperative, which is a divine mandate from God. Lupeo, lupeo is the Greek word. It means to cause pain. Don’t cause the Holy Spirit pain. Don’t grieve him. Your sin causes the Holy Spirit to have sorrow. And this simply is because he knows you exercised your volition to step outside of the will of God for your life. Part of the ministry of the Holy Spirit is to guide you and protect you. But now through your disobedience and your sin, you pushed him away and you stepped outside of God’s plan. So the chastening that we’re talking about, do not despise the chastening. It’s designed to make you aware that you’ve entered the danger zone. 1 Peter 5, 8 says, be sober, pay attention, be vigilant because your adversary, the devil, walks around like a roaring lion seeking who he can devour. So when you step out of the protective reign of the Holy Spirit, he knows you’re very vulnerable. Here’s the sad thing is that many believers try to live the spiritual life in the energy of the flesh, which is simply you doing the right thing, but doing it in the wrong way. So when you have sin in your life, and you quench and grieve the Holy Spirit, we’ll get to the word quench here in just a second, then you have went out on your own trying to live your spiritual life under your own power and your own dynamics, which is called human good, which would all be burned up at the judgment seat of Christ. So we’ve already had the mandate, don’t grieve the Spirit of God. Now we’re going to go to the one that says, don’t quench the Spirit. Now that you’ve stepped out of the divine plan by committing your personal sins, you quenched his ability to assist you in several areas. For example, in Romans 8, 26, your prayer life will be shut down and will not be effective if you have unconfessed sin in your life. Romans 8, 26, likewise the Spirit also helps our weaknesses, for we do not know what we should pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. So principle one, out of fellowship with God through personal sin causes your prayer life to be ineffective. since the Holy Spirit cannot intercede for you. So here you are, you’re praying two or three times a day, but you have unconfessed sin in your life, you’ve quenched the Holy Spirit, you’ve grieved the Holy Spirit, and you’re doing a right thing, which is prayer, but you’re doing it in a wrong way, which is through the energy of the flesh. Point two, with the Holy Spirit quenched and grieved, your ability to metabolize the Scripture is also hindered. Listen to John 14, 26, when the Lord Jesus Christ said, but the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. So without the ministry of the Holy Spirit, you’re not gonna be able to metabolize the word of God that you hear from the pulpit of your church or from me or from any other teacher of God’s word. You have to learn that. That’s why this chastening is here because you have shut down the ministry of the Holy Spirit, you’ve grieved the Holy Spirit, quenched the Holy Spirit, and you’re out on your own. You’re very vulnerable. What a sad state of affairs it is for you to be out of fellowship with God by committing personal sin, and thus what you’re doing is effectively sabotaging your spiritual life. So warning discipline can sometimes be ignored, not paid attention to, and thus God has to turn up the heat a little bit to get your attention. And why does he do that? To keep you from self-destructing. And that’s called intense discipline. And so the passage goes on to say in Hebrews 12, and he scourges every son whom he receives. Scourges is the Greek word mastigaio. Mastigaio. What does mastigaio mean in the Greek? It means to administer pain. So what does this verse say? God can administer pain into your life. And this is divine discipline called intense discipline. You see, the problem is when you lack the genuine humility to recognize and admit your disobedience and to admit your trip into carnality, then your Heavenly Father will have to cause some pain. Why does he do that? Well, it’s to shock you. Hopefully, it causes you to recover your spiritual life’s objective. And this is simply enforced humility since you don’t have genuine humility. God will humble you and God will break your arrogance if you’re his child, if you’re his son. Now, that’s what it said. If you’re a son, you’re going to be chastened and sometimes scourged. I remind you of the prodigal son in Luke 15, 11 through 20. Let me read that to you a little bit. Then he said to them, this is the Lord Jesus Christ giving this parable, a certain father had two sons. I like to call them Frick and Frack, two sons. And the younger one of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that fall to me. So he divided unto them his inheritance. And not many days after that, the younger son gathered all together and journeyed to a far country and wasted his possessions with riotous living. But when he had spent everything, there arose a severe famine in that land, and he began to be in want. This means he’s dying. He doesn’t have any food to eat. So he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, took a job, and he sent him into the field to feed the pigs. And he would have gladly eaten the slop the pigs were eating because he had nothing else to eat. But when he came to himself, that is genuine humility, The enforced humility of divine discipline had broken his spirit, and he’s now got some genuine humility. He’s now come to himself, which means he’s humble enough to say, how many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough to spare, and I am perishing with hunger. I will arise, I will go to my father, and I will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I’m no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants. This is a beautiful picture of the rebound technique on the flat line of your soul. When you sin and you don’t listen to the warning discipline, and God has to imply the intense discipline to break your arrogance, Then when you have enough humility to go back to the Father and say, I’ve sinned. I’m not worthy to be called your son. Well, he was worthy. The Father didn’t disown him. And he reinstated him. And that’s what happens to you. When you break fellowship with God, you are reinstated into fellowship by rebounding. 1 John 1.9, it says, if we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us. and to purify us from all wrongdoing. So notice, number one, he was starving. That’s the intense discipline. And finally, he came to himself. That’s brought about by enforced humility. Point two, notice he went to his father and confessed his sin. Point three, this is exactly what you and I must do as quickly as we realize that we have sinned. We can’t let sin hang around in our life. So let me give you this illustration. If you get up in the morning, you’re going to work, and traffic is kind of nasty and bad, and you get mad, and you start blowing your horn, people blow the horn at you, and next thing you know, somebody’s flipping you off on the other lane, and you’re getting mad. Now you’re out of fellowship. Now you’ve broken and quenched the Holy Spirit, grieved the Holy Spirit, and you’re going to go through the whole day thinking you’re serving God, but you forgot that you sinned on the way to work this morning when you lost your temper in that traffic. It could be a mother trying to get the kids out to school, and she gets mad, yells at them, screams at them because they won’t get ready. And she’s mad as a wet hen because they won’t come out and get going. That can happen to you so easy, and you forget that you’re sinning. Don’t do that. You must confess your sin quickly when you realize you’ve sinned. If you’ve sinned at 7.30 a.m. in the morning, you must confess that sin at 7.31 a.m. if you can, or else you’re going to be out of fellowship, a carnal Christian walking in the energy of the flesh, thinking you’re doing the right thing, but doing it in the wrong way. And I warn you, point four, don’t wait until you’re almost dead like the prodigal son did. Five, it is possible that the pain and the difficulty you’re facing right now currently is the evidence of intense discipline being administered to your life. Is it possible? Are you going through intense discipline right now? Is God dealing with you in a manner such as this? All designed to break your arrogance and introduce genuine humility. Point six, this pain is administered because God loves you. He’s not mad at you. He loves you. He’s trying to keep you from self-destruction. That’s why Hebrews 12, six says, those whom the Lord loves, he disciplines. He loves you tremendously. And if you don’t respond to the discipline, you will self-destruct. There is another stage called dying discipline. Stage one, warning discipline. Stage two, intense discipline. Stage three, dying discipline. Listen to Hebrews again in verse nine. Here we go again. furthermore we’ve had human fathers who corrected us and we paid them respect shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the father of spirits and live and live compare that with this verse in proverbs 15 10 harsh discipline is for him who forsakes the way and he who hates correction will die he who hates correction will die That simply means if you’re not humble enough to admit your sin, if you’re so arrogant that you cannot see what you’re really doing, you’re setting yourself up for an early death. So again, shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? God may have a plan for you to live to be 100, but because of your sin and disobedience and arrogance and your own self-righteousness, you may be checked out at 50 because you wouldn’t listen. Harsh discipline, Proverbs 15.10, is for those who forsake the way, and those who hate correction will die. Point one, at this point, there’s no more reason for God to keep you around. In John 5, 16, 1 John, 1 John 5, 16, it says there is a sin terminating unto death. Point two, it’s at this point that you become a danger to others and a distraction to those around you. Point three, you did not listen or respond to the earlier warning discipline, an intense discipline, and perhaps now you can even be bitter towards God, blaming God for all your own misfortune and your own troubles. All three categories are seen in 1 Corinthians 11, verses 30 through 31, where Paul dealt with taking communion out of fellowship. Have you taken communion? Do you belong to a church that serves communion? Then you need to listen to this. If you take communion with unconfessed sin in your life, you’re setting yourself up for an early death. 1 Corinthians 11, 30 through 31. That is why many among you are weak, that’s warning discipline, and sick, intense discipline. And a number of you have fallen asleep, that’s dying discipline. But if we were more discerning with regard to ourself, we would not come under such discipline or judgment. It’s very possible if you continue the path you’re on in your life and you ignore God’s warning discipline and God’s intense discipline that you’re setting yourself up for an early death. Because just as God administers divine discipline to his disobedient children, I want you to know that he can also administer divine discipline to client nations that represent him, the United States of America being one of them. America is just that sort of client nation. And it’s very likely, and I’m not saying probable, but it’s likely that many of the natural disasters we’re experiencing could in fact be discipline on our nation. So let me give you some closing principles today. One, divine discipline does not imply that you lose your salvation. No one loses their salvation when they sin. That’s not what’s happening. No matter how intense the suffering, you will never lose your salvation because once you believe in Christ, there’s nothing that you can do to cancel what God accomplished at your salvation. So divine discipline does not imply you’re losing your salvation. You break fellowship with God, you don’t rebound and confess your sin, you stay out of fellowship, you go through warning discipline, intense discipline, dying discipline, you will be in heaven because of the compliments of the Lord Jesus Christ and what he did for you on that cross. Two, punishment from God often follows a failure to rebound from our sin. Problem solving device number one. Every sin that you and I do originates from our free will. Though temptation may come from our sin nature or from another source, don’t know where it’s gonna come from, but we have to make the decision to commit the sin. And all wrong decisions that we make come from some form of arrogance or trust. Three, divine discipline is the sum total of punitive action taken by the justice of God in grace. He’s not mad at you. He loves you. It’s taken by the justice of God in grace to correct you, to punish you, to encourage you, to train you, to motivate you to live the protocol plan of God. Point four, divine discipline must also be distinguished from the law of volitional responsibility and with its very own self-imposed, self-induced, self-indulged form of misery. Because you are responsible for your decisions. As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is. So when you make a volitional decision, you have to understand that you’re going to be responsible for that. And bad decisions not only destroy all future options in your life, but they result in tremendous misery that you manufacture by yourself and for which you have to take the responsibility, or me as well. The resulting discomfort, the resulting misery, the resulting unhappiness may last for a short or even a long period of time. Five, while God is the source of divine discipline, man’s free will is a source of suffering under the law of volitional responsibility. So God uses his sovereignty And it’s perfect judgment to know when it’s time to warn us that we are out of fellowship and bring us back to reality with the various categories of punishment. So if this message sounds like your experience, I encourage you to rebound now and recover quickly so you can continue to enjoy life with God’s blessings in your life. I have known in my life ministry of 50 plus years in the ministry. a few people that went out under the sin and the death. I’ve seen it happen. It was never pleasant. It wasn’t very nice to look at. They were believers. They had accepted Christ as their Savior, but they would not abandon or forsake certain sins in their life. And they continue to go back and go back and go back and go back and not confess that sin ever, never rebound the sin, never confess it, and just live in the sin. And even though the discipline was there, the warning discipline was there, and the intense discipline was there, they would not rebound. Remember, those types of discipline are designed to cause you to rebound so you can put the Holy Spirit back in control and actually live your spiritual life. You cannot live the spiritual life out of fellowship. You got to understand that the spiritual life is is lived by the power of the Holy Spirit and the indwelling of the word of God in your soul. These two things together give you a balance in your life. So that’s why you’re told in Ephesians 518 to be filled with the spirit. And you’re told in the scripture to grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It is the word of God. the Holy Spirit uses to guide you, to encourage you, and to protect you. If you’re not growing spiritually, then your spiritual life is ineffective. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be ineffective. I don’t want to be a loser. I don’t want to get to heaven and have God say, take a seat in the back row. We’ll get to you in a few thousand years. I’d like to hear, well done, my good and faithful servant. And I bet you would too. But I think you need to consider what I’m teaching this morning because could I be speaking about you? Is it possible that the suffering and the pain and the misery that you’re going through is not just to run a bad fortune, not just to run a bad luck, but it’s actually discipline from God in your life trying to get your attention? Is it time for you to rebound and get back in fellowship? Is it time for you to confess your sin to God and admit what you’ve been doing and quit trying to hide it or quit ignoring it? Because the longer you ignore it, the greater the pain. If you’re God’s child, if you’ve been saved, I promise you he will not let you go far without stepping in. Warning discipline, intense discipline, even dying discipline, all the result of your volitional responsibility for the decisions that you made in your life. So pay attention this morning. I hope you’ve learned something. I hope I’ve encouraged you And I hope maybe by listening to this, we’ll deliver you from what misfortune lays ahead. Until next week, I’m your host, Rick Hughes. And I thank you for listening to The Flatline this morning.
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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.
