SPEAKER 01 : 0:08

Welcome to the Flatline with your host, Rick Hughes. For the next 30 minutes, you’ll be inspired, motivated, educated, but never manipulated. Now, your host, Rick Hughes.

SPEAKER 02 : 0:23

Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, we’d like to invite you to stay tuned. 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, a whole lot of education with no manipulation. Because we’re not trying to con you. We’re not trying to solicit money from you. We’re not trying to sell you anything. We’re not going to ask you to join anything. We’d just like for you to listen. Listen as I try to verify and identify the plan of God for your life. And if it’s possible, if I can do that, then hopefully you will orient and adjust to the plan. Before we begin our message today on the Flatline, I’d like to remind you of several things. First of all, our podcast, we do podcast all of our radio shows on social media podcast platforms like Spotify, Podbean, and Apple iPod. So if you have a cell phone, you’re able to listen to the Flatline 24 hours a day, seven days a week, anywhere in the world by logging in to Spotify, Podbean, or Apple iPod. All these are free podcast venues. They don’t cost anything to join them. You just download them, put them on your phone, and then search for The Flotline. And when you see The Flotline, click on that, and it’ll begin to show you the different shows. You can listen in your car while you’re driving to work or whenever you’re doing it on your phone, sitting at home, through the podcast. Right now, we’re working on 2 million downloads on the podcast, so I’m very grateful for that. Also, let me remind you of our website, rickhughesministries.org, rickhughesministries.org. There you can see a complete list of our books that we make available free of charge. I would like to remind you that we have transcripts available from 2019, 2020. 2021 these are all completely typed up for each show so we have all the type message from each show for each of those years it’s 52 messages in the books and it’s a good reading if you’d like to have that it’s available free of charge that’s the transcripts from 19 20 and 21 radio shows today is radio show number 991 sundays we’ve been on the air working on closing in on 1000 Sunday, so I’m very grateful for the privilege that God gives me the opportunity to come into your home or into your car and talk with you and give you this information. Okay, are you ready? All right, here we go. Lock it in. Let’s get ready. In today’s world, with all of our modern conveniences, like I’m talking about, cell phones and things like that, the computer, both of these things have the ability to communicate with masses of people with simply the stroke of a mouse or the flick of your finger. So many different believers are willing to give up their privacy. This is what’s amazing. They’re willing to give up their privacy and expose every detail of their private lives either on their messages on their cell phone or their computer. Today’s generations are obsessed, it seems to me like, with taking what we call selfies. That’s taking a picture of yourself and posting it on a social media website like Facebook or Instagram. That’s what it is, taking pictures of yourself, uploading that picture to a social media platform, And what you’re doing is simply calling attention to yourself and what you’re doing. I’ve done some of that in the past when we caught fish and took pictures of them and put them on the internet and showed them on Facebook or Instagram, kind of bragging about what we caught. But this goes way beyond that, what I’m talking about. Today’s degenerate individuals no longer even try to hide their sins but openly flaunt their degeneracy as a tool to recruit other like-minded individuals. And so a lot of degenerate people are on these things like Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat and TikTok, and they’re using those to recruit individuals. This is one reason that a parent must not let their young children have any access to the internet before they understand exactly what it’s all about. I sometimes wonder what these individuals are thinking that do these sort of things. Why do we expose ourselves all of our personal medical issues for the entire world? Or why do we feel the need to show all of our vacation pictures? Why do we feel the need to show all of our wedding pictures? What’s the intense need for us to be noticed or applauded or appreciated? Why do we willingly give up all this information? Well, we certainly don’t want a peeping Tom hanging around our house at night, do we? That’s why we pull down the shades or close the curtains. We want privacy. But then so many people get on social media and pull back the curtain, lift the shades, for everybody to see every detail of their personal lives, including medical issues or even private family matters. So I want to ask you a question about this. What do you think God’s Word says about your privacy? The Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy, the pastor of the church at Ephesus, and warned him about individuals in the congregation who are nosy and would invade the privacy of other people. This is what he wrote in 1 Timothy 5, 13 to young Timothy. And at the same time also they learned to be idle. These are widows now, young widows he’s talking about. Having wandered around from house to house and not merely idle, but also gossips and intruders of privacy. You hear that? Intruders of privacy. Constantly saying those things which ought not to be mentioned. The word that Paul uses there for loss of privacy is an interesting Greek word which means to be sticking your nose into someone else’s private affairs. And Paul’s trying to instruct young Timothy how to handle these younger widows in the congregation at Ephesus. These instructions actually start in 1 Timothy 5, 3 and go all the way through verse 16. I don’t wish to get into all of the instructions here, because I’m not a pastor of a local church, but I do wish to extrapolate a principle or two that we should be aware of, and that is your loss of privacy. I’d like to pass along to you some thoughts on the privacy of the believer, which my very own pastor taught me years ago. Here’s some of his notes I took. He won’t mind me sharing them, I’m sure. He said privacy is a state of being apart from the observation and the company of other people. Sometimes you just want your privacy and you don’t want to be invaded by other people. And two, it is the innate right of the human race to seclusion. And I know many of us enjoy being secluded and getting along, taking a hike through the woods or driving our car or sitting at home and just leave me alone, let me have some privacy. Number three, privacy is the principle of freedom whereby an individual of the human race has a right to retire from the company of others if he or she wishes to and remain in seclusion from the knowledge or observation of other people. Privacy, property, and your life are the basic concepts of happiness and freedom in the world. So five, the laws of divine establishment guarantee the privacy of every member of the human race, so that you can exercise your freedom uncoerced. Of course, there’s an exception to that, and that exception is criminals. Criminals don’t have any privacy, they’re incarcerated. They’ve had their privacy taken away due to their criminal activity. But divine establishment principles such as freedom, marriage, family, and nationalism guarantee that you have privacy and you have the right to be left alone if you wish. So in addition to freedom, in addition to establishment, every believer has additional privacy from what the Bible calls your royal priesthood. And that means you have the privacy to fulfill the principles of living your life as unto the Lord without someone else sticking their nose in your business telling you how you’re supposed to live. Religion is good at doing this. Organized religion will tell you in a heartbeat, you’re supposed to tithe, brother. You’re supposed to give me your money, brother. You’re supposed to not do this and not do that, brother. And if you do this and do that, brother, you’re not a very good Christian, brother. And most of the time, the Bible doesn’t even say whatever they’re preaching. So here’s another principle. Throughout the gospel, The Lord Jesus Christ dealt with disciples, and when he did, he dealt with them privately. Did you know that? Since much of what occurred amongst him and his disciples was called family business. In Matthew 17, 19, listen to this. Then the disciples came to Jesus in private. Uh-oh, in private. In 24, verse three of Matthew, as Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him in private. In Mark 4, 34, he did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything that’s private. Now, here’s another principle. When people sin, their privacy still has to be respected. Matthew 18, 15. If your brother or your sister sins, go and point it out to them. Point out their fault just between the two of you. Don’t run around, tell everybody else in town what you know. Don’t stick your nose in their business. Don’t go run, tell your neighbor what your other neighbor did. If you’re a Christian and you see a brother or sister committing a sin, you can go to them in privacy and you can talk together. And if they listen to you, the Bible says in Matthew 18, 15, then you’ve won them over. So point three, no Christian, no believer has a right to intrude on the privacy of another believer. John 21, 21. Now, this is interesting. When Peter saw him, he asked the Lord, he’s talking about John, what about him? And Jesus answered, watch this thing about privacy. If I want him to remain alive until I return, what business is that of yours? You must follow me. So Peter got rebuked for sticking his nose into John’s business. Privacy can be violated by gossiping, by maligning, by judging, by intruding into the privacy of someone else. That’s all compared in the Bible. You won’t believe it. Hang on now. It’s compared to stealing and murder. In 1 Peter 4, 15, if you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or a thief or any other kind of criminal or even as a meddler. That’s an invader and one invades privacy. I know that because the word used for meddler means a person interfering in the affairs of someone else. That word meddler is what we call a hapoxlegomenon. I know it sounds weird, hapoxlegomenon. What is that? It means it’s only used one time in the New Testament, never again, just one time. That’s where the word meddler comes from. Someone who sticks his nose into someone else’s business. The writer of this passage here in 1 Peter seems to imply that those, refer to those who with holy but intemperate zeal meddle, and I said holy but intemperate zeal. Can’t control their zeal. They meddle in the affairs of the Gentiles, whether public or private, civil or sacred, in order to make them conform to the Christian standards. And that’s never our job to try to make some unbeliever conform to Christian standards. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t witness to them. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t give the gospel to the lost individual. But it does mean that we should give them the freedom and the privacy to reject the message or receive the message. Even unbelievers have the right to live their lives as they wish, remember that. If they don’t wish to accept Christ, it’s their business. Tell them to have a nice day and move on down the road. Because you’re gonna find people that just are not interested. As Christians, we may wish that everybody in this nation would observe God’s moral laws, but we have no right to meddle in their affairs by trying to force them to live by the same code that you and I live by. That’s not the way we do it. The forcing of religious codes on the population is exactly what somebody like the Taliban does in Afghanistan. In that country, you can be put in jail or perhaps even put to death if you don’t obey the religious rituals of the Taliban. By comparison, the Bible says in Revelation 22, 16, God does not coerce you into believing in his only begotten son. He doesn’t force you to do it. In Revelation 22, 16, Jesus said, I, Jesus, have sent my angels to testify to you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright and morning star and the spirit and the bride say come. And let him who hears say come. And let him who thirsts come. And whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely. So the Lord Jesus Christ gives you your privacy. If you’re thirsty, if you’re hungry, then come. He’ll feed you and he’ll take care of you. So now when should you expect to have privacy? I think in the future generations of Americans, they may not have much privacy. The strange thing is that most people are willingly giving up their privacy so they can feel connected to one another. I find it amazing that so many believers disclose not only their personal medical history, on the internet but they also freely disclose the medical history of their family and the medical history of their friends through these social media platforms like facebook instagram tick tock whatever in order supposedly supposedly in order to request prayer for that individual While it’s properly all right to request prayer in times of testing, may I suggest that perhaps we need to be a little more cautious when we disclose in detail every medical procedure that our loved ones are experiencing. I mean, even the doctors, come on, even the doctor of the hospital won’t disclose private medical information. But believers seem to freely discuss private matters in the name of, quote, requesting prayer. I suggest you stop doing that. If someone wants to tell the world what they’re going through, that’s their opportunity, but not yours. You don’t need to get on the Internet. and tell everybody that little Johnny broke his toe and everybody needs to pray for little Johnny that it doesn’t have to be amputated. I’m being humorous, but you know what I mean. Remember this, now don’t forget this. God is always watching over us. He is. So he is actually the only one that needs to know all the details about what we’re going through. In Psalm 139 verse two, here’s a word that says you have no privacy with God. God knows everything. In Psalm 139 verse two, you know my sitting down and you know my rising up and you understand my thoughts from afar off. So God in his omniscience clearly knows everything about us and everything that we do. Listen to Proverbs 521, for the ways of a man are before the eyes of the Lord and he ponders all of his paths. So 24 seven, God is watching you. I mean, you can go into your room, shut the curtains, you can black everything out, you can turn off the radio, but God is still watching you. Did you know he can even read your mind? Did you know God knows what you’re thinking? That’s how he’s able to identify mental attitude sins like fear and worry and bitterness and jealousy. You don’t have to say a word. I mean, these are mental attitude sins you can commit by just keeping your mouth shut and thinking them. God knows what you’re thinking. He’s aware of what you’re thinking. And he can understand your thoughts from afar off, Psalm 139 verse two. Clearly, the omniscience of God is with you 24-7. So we expect privacy, don’t you? I mean, it’s coming up on voting season. Not far off would be at the polls voting. If we go to the polls to vote, we don’t go outside and tell everybody who we voted for. We want privacy. We want to step into the polling booth, pull the curtain, pull the lever, and step out and go home. We don’t want people to know who we voted for. We want privacy. And we expect privacy in our homes, in our private life. We don’t need people come barging in, opening the door without knocking or without calling first or without asking. But we are told even this, and this is interesting. We are told through the scriptures and the word of God that we should offer our prayers in private as well. In Matthew 6, five through six, listen to this. And when you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that’s for attention, so they can be seen by men, quote. Assuredly, Jesus said, I say to you, they have their reward, that’s the attention of men, but you, that’s believers, When you pray, you go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who’s in a secret place, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. So it’s a good thing when you have your prayer life, your in-depth prayer life, to pray privately. This is not excluding praying for the dinner blessing or praying with friends, but I’m talking about in your private prayer life when you go through adoration, intercession, application, motivation, pray privately to the Lord. We’re told in Scripture in Luke 12, two and three, there is nothing covered that will not be revealed. There’s nothing hidden that will not be known. Therefore, whatever you’ve spoken in the dark will be heard in the light, and whatever you speak in the ear in the inner room will be reclaimed on the housetops. In that passage, it’s interesting, our Lord is warning the disciples about being hypocritical. like the Pharisees. And the principle taught is God will disclose every thought the hypocrite has, in Luke 12, one. So what about the word confidentiality? That’s an interesting word. Is it impossible to keep anything confidential from God? Yes. Nothing in all of creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give an account. In Hebrews 4.13, and there is no creature hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of him whom we must give an account. So confidentiality is definitely an earthly concern, but it does not extend vertically into the boundaries of heaven. Another word that we like to use for confidentiality is the word discretion. Sometimes, some things need to be kept private. Life is like a fisherman who, it’s interesting here, I’ll give you this analogy. Your life, my life, is like the fisherman who likes to show pictures of the catch. But when it gets down to the nitty-gritty of what he caught them on and where he caught them and what lure were you using and where did you catch them, he keeps that private. I’m not going to tell you that. Just look at my big fish. Look at what I caught. Where did you catch it? No, I can’t tell you that. What did you catch them on? I can’t tell you that. I watch a lot of fishing shows when I’m home and television. It’s always the same way. They’ll catch these big fish, but they hide the lure so you won’t see it. They want the discretion of keeping that to themselves. Keeping something confidential out of sound discretion is not necessarily a bad thing. But the Bible demands confidentiality in some areas of our life. We are definitely obligated to honor secrets told to us in confidence, unless there’s a pressing reason not to do that. In Proverbs 11, 13, the Bible clearly says a tale bearer, a tale bearer reveals secrets But he who is of a faithful spirit conceals the matter. In fact, those who cannot keep a secret are to be avoided, the Bible says, because a gossip betrays confidence. So avoid anyone who talks too much. Proverbs 20, verse 19. He who goes about as a tale bearer reveals secrets. Therefore, do not associate with one who flatters with his lips. This is the way people get. They make friends with other friends telling them about what you’re doing, about what someone else is doing. If they get a little bit of information, they’ll tell you about it. Oh, let me tell you what happened. Oh, let me tell you what we did. Oh, let me tell you what they’re going through. So you can pray about it, brother. That’s a joke. Privacy, confidentiality, discretion are all three traits of the spiritually mature individual. So I ask you about your life. Do you respect the privacy of other individuals? Do you keep your nose out of the business of other people in your church, in your community? Do you give them confidentiality? Do you respect privacy of other people? Do you keep things confidential? And can you be discreet in your personal life as a Christian? These are all signs of a mature believer. And you’ll never get to be a mature believer until you begin to grow in the grace and knowledge of your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. That’s why you’re told in the Bible to study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, but rightly dividing the word of truth. So if you’re gonna develop this privacy and have the trait of confidentiality and discretion, you must grow spiritually. Because once you’re filled with the Holy Spirit, and once you shut that old sin nature activity down, you’ll quit doing these sort of things. You’ll quit gossiping, you’ll quit snooping, you’ll quit running your nose and sticking your nose in someone else’s business. And you’ll get off that internet and quit trying to put pictures of yourself up there every two or three minutes and telling everybody what’s going on with your life. Give yourself some privacy and give your friends privacy. I used to have a friend, I still do, who’s a pastor, and I would take pictures of us occasionally. He’d say, you’re not gonna put that on the internet, are you? And I’d say, nope, not unless you ask me to. You gotta respect people’s privacy. You gotta give them privacy to live their life as unto the Lord. Please remember that. It’s important that you understand the privacy of the priesthood. When you wanna confess your sin, As per 1 John 1, 9, which we call rebound, problem-solving device number one, you want to do that in privacy. You are never told to get up in front of the church and confess your sins to the congregation. That’s not in the Bible. Don’t you dare do that. Don’t you let some preacher trick you into getting up in front of the whole congregation and telling them what sins you’ve done. If you’ve committed sin, you go to God the Father and you do exactly what he says. If we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us of our sin and to purify us from all wrongdoing. So this is what Paul dealt with with Timothy. He had to teach Timothy how to coach these young widows to quit being gossips and quit intruding on the privacy of other people. Quit constantly getting into their meddling in their affairs of life. And that was that word that we dealt with, meddler, a gossip, intruders of privacy. I didn’t give you the Greek word because it’s too hard for me to pronounce, but that’s what Paul said. Don’t let them be people that stick their nose into other people’s business. So that’s what I’ve learned over the years from my pastor, that privacy is critical, privacy is important, and privacy is what my right is, is to stay out of the observation and the company of other people if I wish to do so, and the same with you as well. Privacy, property, your right to own property, and your right to live your life as you wanna live your life, are the basic concepts of happiness and freedom in a nation such as the United States of America. What a wonderful nation we have, and how much more wonderful it would be if people would give us our privacy and quit soliciting money from us on the phone, quit calling us, quit trying to get us to vote some certain way, quit trying to lie to us over the TV. Give us our privacy, let us make our minds up, and let us judge our lives according to scripture as the word of God tells us what to do. That’s why it says the word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit and the joints and the marrow, and is a critic of thoughts and intents of the heart. You learn the word of God, you put it in your soul, in the mentality of your soul, and it will guide you and it will give you wisdom and it will give you discernment. And when you make decisions, keep your mouth shut, don’t blab it and tell everybody in the whole world what you do. That’s between you and God. Are you going to give up your privacy willingly like so many people are doing today? Okay. Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this. Kind of a technical message, but I hope you’ve learned something. Until next week, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flatline.

SPEAKER 01 : 27:14

Thank you for listening to The Floodline with your host, Rick Hughes. If you’d like to contact Rick, please write to him at P.O. Box 100, Cropwell, Alabama, 35054, or online at www.rickhughesministries.org.