Satanic Devices – Part 2
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 572 aired on August 14, 2016
Good morning and welcome to The FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick Hughes and for the next few
minutes please stay with me. As usual it’s going to be some motivation, inspiration and
education, and we do it without any manipulation. We’re not going to try to coerce you into
doing anything. We’re not going to solicit money or ask you to join anything. We’re simply
going to give you accurate information designed to help you verify as well as identify the plan of
God for your life. That’s right, it is a show about God and the Bible but not like you’ve heard
before. It’s a little different approach here because our job is not to rant and rave but to give you
specific procedures and promises that are found in the Bible so that you can have a FLOT line in
your soul. FLOT stands for forward line of troops and this is a military analogy. What we’re
doing is using a military analogy to say that you can build a strong, main line of resistance in
your soul. If you will learn God’s Word, specifically 10 problem-solving devices that we teach on
this show, then this main line of resistance called a FLOT line will stop the outside sources of
adversity before they become the inside sources of stress. This is why we always say, adversity is
inevitable, stress is optional because adversity may be what circumstances do to you but stress is
what you do to yourself. The Christian life is a life free of stress, no worry, no fear, no hatred, no
bitterness, no antagonism, this is not the Christian life. This is the energy of the flesh, the sin
nature. My job is to get on this radio program and give you some accurate information. Your job,
should you decide to take it (sounds like mission impossible doesn’t it?) is to believe what I’m
teaching you and apply it into your life. This is the secret to the Christian life.
Jesus our Lord
and Savior said,
“Happiness belongs to those who hear My Father’s Word and keep it”
(Luke
11:28). Hear, keep and apply – this is the whole deal.
We hear stuff but we don’t always keep
stuff. When it comes to understanding the Bible and understanding God’s plan for your life,
hearing and keeping are essential because if you just hear it, sure it becomes knowledge but not
the kind of knowledge that translates into wisdom. It’s just sort of an earthly knowledge. It’s an
academic book knowledge but if you hear it, believe it, and apply it into your life by means of
God the Holy Spirit, then it becomes a weapon. Then it becomes wisdom. Wisdom is a weapon
for you, a weapon to protect you. It’s a weapon to give you insight into what the world is trying
to lure you with or seduce you with. When you have this weapon of wisdom, this is a
phenomenal way to live and it all starts with learning God’s Word. This is why 2 Timothy 2:15
says,
“Study to show thyself approved unto God a workman that needeth not to be ashamed,
rightly dividing the Word of truth.”
God asks you to study. He asks you to grow. As 2 Peter 3:18
says,
“Grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
These are
two mandates from the Bible right here, these are for you. Let me tell you a few things about The
FLOT Line. We’re going into the 10th year of broadcasting across this country and we are
expanding. We’re hoping to go into some other major cities very soon. You can always go to our
website and there you can see a list of the radio shows, when they play, what city they’re in, and
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also you can hear the show. We have them all categorized. We have them all by year and you can
click on them and listen to them, even on your mobile device like your cell phone, your iPad, or
whatever you may have. It will play on that as well and you can get right to it. These are
designed to give you 30 minutes of accurate information but keep in mind please, I’m not a
pastor. I’m not pretending to be a pastor. My job is to direct you to a well-qualified pastor.
My
job is to help you see why it’s essential that you get under a well-qualified pastor because
that man is going to shepherd your soul.
We are sheep and we need a shepherd and the pastor-
teacher is our shepherd. It’s his job, the responsibility God gives him to watch over us, to care for
us, to feed us, and to nurture us. I don’t know if you have a well-qualified shepherd. I really don’t
know where you go to church.
I would tell you this, he’s one of the most important people in
your life and therefore when Satan wants to make an attack on you you can bet one thing.
He’s going to attack your pastor.
He’s going to do everything that he can to destroy your pastor.
As a matter of fact, if I were Satan, this is an analogy here, what would I do to destroy a church?
I thought about this the other day. I thought, what exactly is Satan’s approach? If I was Satan,
what would I do? I want to give you some things that I think Satan does to destroy churches and
I want you to answer the question. If you see this going on in your church, because remember
that you as an individual are a representative of Jesus Christ, your job is to re-present Him. Your
local church, this is the representative body of Christ to the community and to the neighborhood.
They represent Christ in the church and community and you re-present Christ in your physical
body and the way that you think. You become Christlike in what you think. This is why
Philippians 2:5 says,
“Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus.”
You have to learn
to think like He thought. How did He think? Philippians 2:6-7 says,
“Who thought it not robbery
to be equal with God but made Himself of no reputation and humbled Himself.”
Our Lord and
Savior, when He walked on this earth had a humility profile and this is the key for you. This is
the key for me. We must understand,
“God makes war with the arrogant but He gives grace to
the humble”
(James 4:6). Humility doesn’t mean that we walk around round shouldered and our
eyes down, never looking up, and acting very humble. Humility means we orient to authority, we
adjust to authority, we don’t react to bad situations. We respond rather than react to situations and
when you have this type of humility, this is what God is looking for.
A man or woman that God
can use must have some humility.
Satan, in order to short circuit sound Biblical information, is
going to try to destroy that church and you probably have seen this happen in several churches.
The first thing is to get the congregation to doubt the leadership of the pastor, to doubt his
ability to lead.
Being a pastor does not imply the existence of leadership. Just because he’s a
pastor doesn’t mean that he’s a great leader. It’s about the gift, not the popularity of the person
and so first of all you need to understand something. The pastor doesn’t have to be the most
popular person in the city. He’s not out to win a popularity contest. He’s out to accurately teach
God’s Word, that’s all his job is. You may like him, he may have a pleasing personality, or he may
not have a pleasing personality but if you go to war with him because you don’t like his
personality, you’re totally out of line. A lot of people buck leadership. Do you know why they do
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this? Because we all have a sin nature and often don’t like to be led. You know this don’t you?
You don’t like people telling you what to do. As a matter fact when it comes down to
denominational churches, pastors are run off yearly from different churches, different
denominations. Sometimes because some pastor takes some church where the congregation
doesn’t want to go or be told they are wrong and maybe someone in the church has a lot of
power and so they run the pastor off and hire another one that will give them what they want to
hear. If you’re that pastor, you’ve been run off, God bless you. It’s a good thing you left that
place. They’ll figure it out someday. If not, they’ll just go up in flames. A good leader, great
leadership is always demonstrated in a great crisis.
It’s true that a really great pastor must
face a great threat at least once in his ministry to see how he comes out and see how he
handles it. It’s what refines him.
Even Paul was accused of sedition in Acts 24:6-7. The
Pharisees said,
“He even tried to desecrate the temple, and then we seized him. [We wanted to
judge him according to our own Law.] But Lysias the commander came along, and with much
violence took him out of our hands.”
This is the testimony of Ananias before Felix the governor.
You see Paul had gone into the temple and had shaved his head and taken a Nazirite vow which
was a mistake because he would have to sacrifice a lamb. I’m not judging Paul but I’m saying
why would you need to go back and sacrifice a lamb when the Lamb of God had already been
sacrificed? A great disturbance occurred outside the temple and they accused Paul of bringing
Gentiles into the temple. Paul’s buddy shut him out, locked the doors, wouldn’t let him back in
and all the crowd descended on him. This is what they were talking about. Ever since Paul was
converted, ever since on the road when Paul saw the resurrected Jesus Christ and was converted
and began to preach the gospel, many attempts were made to kill him. This is what pastors face,
a great crisis in their ministry, a great crisis in their life. It can be from their spouse, it can be
from the children, it can be from members of the congregation and what makes a pastor great is
how he handles the crisis. Does he respond with forgiveness, insight, and wisdom or does he
react with emotionalism, bitterness, and hatred? The result of great leadership in the local church
always is motivation, being motivated to serve God. Our motivation should be 1 John 5:3. Listen
to this, this is where your motivation should come from.
“If you love Me, obey Me.”
This is your
motivation. Do you love God? You say, “Yes I love God.” He says,
“If you love Me, obey Me
and My mandates are not hard.”
Jesus told the disciples in Luke 6:46,
“Why do you call me
‘Lord, Lord’ and do not do the things which I say?”
This may be true in your life.
Impersonal
love for your pastor is a motivation that stems from his faithfulness to sacrifice his life to
studying and teaching God’s Word to you.
This is what makes you hold him in esteem. This is
what makes you appreciate him, that he sticks his neck out on the line, teaches God’s Word, and
that’s his priority. All leaders including pastors and all followers, we all have the same mandate, I
told you earlier what it was, 1 Peter 5:6,
“Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God so that
He might promote you at the proper time.”
A humility profile is critical for anyone of us who
wants to glorify God to the maximum in our life.
When it comes to the pastor, the leadership
that he gives from that pulpit toward believers is what will make a difference in a hopeless
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situation. Hopefully there will be a rise in fundamental doctrine and we will always have the
Word of God and the accurate teaching of the Word of God by those men who have the spiritual
gift of pastor-teacher. It’s this leadership that is critical and it’s the leadership we’re missing in
America today.
We must have men that will teach God’s Word and more than just a couple.
We must have men that understand grace and are not out to market their message.
Marketing the message is not the plan. Any pastor that has to market the message and says,
“Well, I think God wants me to write this book and I’m going to write it and you can buy it for
$19.95.” No, the Word of God is never for sale. Paul made this very clear. If you believe God led
you to write a book, then give it away. You got it free. You give it away free. We’ve gotten into
Christian marketing today and I think it’s really bad if you ask me. Personality arrogance in a
pastor is when he uses his personality to dominate weak people within the church in order to be
manipulative, in order to lead the group. See, a weak pastor can manipulate the congregation but
he can never motivate them to reach spiritual maturity. He can’t teach the Word of God long
enough to do that but manipulation and domination often come from establishing personal
contacts, becoming friends based on mutual interest. Consider the pastor who might even be your
pastor and he is a multilevel salesman selling something out of the back of his car or out of the
back of his home to milk people in his congregation. God doesn’t ordain anything like this. In 2
Corinthians 2:5 Paul talked about the conflict in the church at Corinth and he said,
“If any has
caused grief, he has caused grief not to me, but in some degree – in order not to say too much –
to all of you.”
See, pastors have people conflicts, people problems and the event Paul is referring
to in this verse centers around a certain person in Corinth. Some people think this person is the
man Paul wrote about in 1 Corinthians 5:1-5. If you haven’t read this, you probably should. It
might embarrass you because it talks about a deviant sexual impulse that a man had. Looking at
the thoughts from others that are much smarter than me like John Walvoord and Roy Zuck in
their book,
Bible Knowledge Commentary of the New Testament,
they suggest that someone
challenged Paul’s authority as an apostle when he went to visit Corinth and that this caused him a
tremendous distraction and even prompted him to cancel a second visit and instead write a letter.
This is called the lost letter. It never made it into the Canon of Scripture. In 2 Corinthians 7:8 it
appears the Corinthian believers had responded to Paul’s suggestion and forgave this man that
caused this problem and accused Paul of not being an apostle lest Satan use it as a wedge.
Satan
loves to drive a wedge in the church and the wedge can be one person that opposes the
pastor.
Once he opposes the pastor and begins to shoot his mouth off and run his mouth off
about the authority of the pastor, then he has set himself up for disaster. Paul said in 2 Corinthian
7:12,
“Therefore, although I wrote to you, I did not do it for the sake of the one who did the
wrong, nor for the sake of him who suffered wrong
[that was Paul]
but that our care for you in
the sight of God might appear obvious.”
In other words Paul was more concerned about how it
affected the people in the church then how it affected him personally so they could restore
fellowship. Why? So Satan could not use this incident to drive a wedge between the church and
the Apostle Paul.
Like coaches on a high school team, pastors face constant criticism,
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constant interference from parents, from those who think they know what’s best. I’m going
to warn you, if you mess with a pastor, you’re messing with God’s man and you’re not
going to like the results. It’s going to be bad news for you.
Pastors must not allow themselves
to be manipulated nor maligned by those in the congregation because pastor-teachers are like the
men who bore the colors in the Civil War, the color bearers. The sharpshooters aimed for them
first so they could cause confusion in the ranks. Likewise the pastor is carrying the colors and so
who do you think Satan is going to aim at first? Listen to this illustration of the 24th Michigan
Infantry part of the Iron Brigade. It was the first infantry engaged at the battle of Gettysburg and
it carried into battle only a state flag which was presented to the regiment by the citizens of
Detroit. This was first carried by color bearer Abel G. Peck, a tall, handsome man and as brave a
soldier as ever who gave his life for his country. When the next color bearer Corporal Wagoner
fell, Colonel Henry Morrow took the flag and gallantly attempted to rally the few survivors of
the 24th Infantry. Private William Kelly took the flag from him and insisted on carrying it telling
Colonel Morrow, “You shall not carry the flag while I’m alive.” The gallant fellow held it aloft
and almost instantly was shot through the heart. Private L. Spaulding then took up the flag from
the hands of Kelly and carried it until he was himself badly wounded and then Colonel Morrow
again seized the flag and soon after was shot in the head and carried from the field. After the fall
of Colonel Morrow, the flag was carried by a soldier whose name has never been ascertained but
he was seen by Captain Albert Edwards who was now in command of the regiment. This soldier,
lying upon the ground badly wounded, was still grasping the flag in his hand. Captain Edwards
took the flag from him and carried it himself until the few men left of the regiment fell back and
retreated to Culps Hill. Edwards is the only man who is known to carry that flag that day who
was not killed and who was not wounded.
When a pastor holds up the colors of Bible
doctrine, he’s the first man to be shot at and I assure you that Satan has excellent
sharpshooters.
Sometimes the pastor may get fragged from members of his own congregation.
In the military being fragged is when an officer has his own men attack him, maybe throw a
grenade at him. Sometimes the pastor can be fragged by members of the congregation and this is
why Paul told Timothy,
“Endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ”
(2 Timothy 2:3).
Then he mentions a couple of guys that did try to frag him, Hymenaeus and Philetus, in 2
Timothy 2:17-18.
“Men who have gone astray from the truth
[and what did they do?] s
aying
that the resurrection has already taken place, and they upset the faith of some.”
This is one of
Satan’s strategies, to get the congregation to doubt the authority the pastor.
Another aim that
he has is to deflect the responsibility of the congregation from reflecting the life of Christ. To
deflect means to turn aside or change directions or get sidetracked, to divert, redirect, “Build
more buildings, let’s go on a crusade, let’s straighten out the devil’s world.” Satan wants you to
get into all this sort of stuff so that you don’t do what you should do which is reflect the life of
Christ.
One of Satan’s strategies is to cause believers to focus on the failure of other people
and not focus on their own failures.
Paul wrote about this in Romans 2:1 where he said, “
You
have no excuse, everyone of you who passes judgment, for in that which you judge another, you
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condemn yourself.”
God does not authorize you to be a judge.
He is the only judge. He is the
only perfect righteousness and perfect justice, not you, not me. He didn’t send us to judge
anybody. When we fail to recognize our sin, when we fail to rectify the problem by using
rebound, we fail and we fail big time. We must accept responsibility for our sins and our failures
and this cannot be done without humility. An arrogant person has an unrealistic self-image. He
doesn’t think he’s failed. The arrogant man thinks he’s fine. The arrogant man is so busy judging
other people that he thinks he’s actually fine and he doesn’t realize that it’s a sin to gossip. It’s a
sin to malign. It’s a sin to complain. It’s a sin to slander and he’s doing all of this because he
doesn’t like what someone in the church is doing. Genesis 3:11-12,
“And He said,
[this is God
speaking to Adam]
‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree which I
commanded you not to eat of?’ And then Adam said, ‘The woman who You gave to me, she gave
me from the tree and I ate it.’”
“The woman made me do it” is not taking responsibility. This is
blaming it on someone else.
If we don’t accept responsibility for our sin, recognize our sin,
rebound our sin, we are never going to advance spiritually.
David recognized his sin. David
rectified the problem when he rebounded his sin and it’s critical that we do the same thing. In 2
Samuel 12:13,
“David said to Nathan, ‘I have sinned against the Lord.’ And Nathan said to
David, ‘The Lord has put away your sin and you will not die.’”
This had to do with Bathsheba
and killing her husband, Uriah the Hittite. David did not try to rationalize his actions by making
excuses. His orientation to grace can be seen in Psalm 51:1-4 where he rebounded when he said,
“Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; according to the greatness of
Your compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse
me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgression to You. My sin is always before me. Against
You and You only have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight.”
How about you? When is
the last time you recognized your sin and rectified the situation by rebounding your sin, going to
God and admitting your sin? Whether it’s a mental attitude sin such as hatred and bitterness and
antagonism. Whether it’s a sin of the tongue such as slander, maligning, gossiping, lying. Or it
might be an overt sin such as stealing or adultery or fornication. Whatever the sin, when is the
last time you went to God and you admitted your sin? Until you do this, you will never move one
inch ahead in the Christian life and you will constantly be under the barrage of discipline from
the Supreme Court of Heaven trying to get your attention before you destroy yourself.
God will
discipline you because He loves you.
“Those whom God loves, He disciplines”
(Hebrews 12:6).
If things are going a little rough for you today, is it some self-induced misery or is it the hand of
God bringing discipline into your life?
God loves you. He will forgive you, cleanse you and
restore you to fellowship but you have to take responsibility for your sin. Admit it to God
and not hide it. This is called rebound and is the first problem-solving device we have in the
FLOT line of our soul.
Don’t forget this,
“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to
forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wrongdoing”
(1 John 1:9). Until next week this is
your host Rick Hughes saying thank you for stopping by and listening to The FLOT Line today.