Arrogance is more than just a trait; it is a catalyst for chaos and destruction. In today’s episode, Rick Hughes unravels the multifaceted nature of arrogance, examining its impact on both personal and national levels. Through scriptural wisdom, listeners are enlightened on the difference between divine and human viewpoints and how arrogance creates a veil of self-deception and unrealistic self-images. Journey towards humility and gain insights on preventing the destructive cycle of sin nature, ultimately guiding your faith towards spiritual fruition.
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 few minutes, I’d like to invite you to stay tuned. It’ll be a short time of motivation, some inspiration, some education, and we do it all without any type of manipulation. That’s right, no con games. We’re not trying to hustle anybody. We’re not trying to solicit membership. We’re not going to ask you for any money. This radio show is a little different because it’s designed to teach you something, to give you accurate information, not some human speculation. But accurate information from the canon of Scripture or the Bible. And so I pray that you’ll listen and that you’ll understand, come to see the dynamics of the Word of God in your life so that you can orient and adjust to the plan. If you’d like to do that, you’ve got the freedom and the privacy to live your life any way you want to do. God did not make you a little automaton. You have the right to do whatever you want to do. He gave you freedom, free will, volition. You can choose for or against his plan. But I’d like to give you the plan. I’d like for you to understand the plan so that you at least know your choices, what they are. Remember, as we talk about on this show, God gave you two ends, one to sit with, one to think with. Success in life is going to depend on which one you use. Heads, you’ll win. Tails, you’ll lose. So learn to think. That’s the dynamics of the Christian life, thinking. Everything you do has to start with a thought, and it turns into a motive, then turns into an action. And some things sometimes have reciprocation that comes with it. But it starts with a thought. What think ye of Christ is the first question the Bible asks. What think ye of Christ? The most important decision anyone could ever make is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the single most significant decision any man, woman, child has to make. What think ye of Christ? Is he indeed the Son of God, as he said he was? Or is he a lunatic and a liar, as some people claim? That’s up to you. You’ll have to weigh the evidence and weigh the facts and make your own decision, but I can tell you, in my opinion, I have believed in Christ. I have received him as my savior. I can identify him working in my life, although I’ve never seen him personally. I will see him someday, but I know he’s real. I know he lives. I know he lives in me. And I know that he loves you and will come and live in you also. To as many as received him, the Bible says, God gave the gift to have eternal life. It’s the most simple decision you could ever make. Father, I’m a sinner. I know that if I died, I’m going to hell. It’s a simple prayer, something like that. That’s all I did. I just simply prayed and asked God to save me. I don’t even remember the words. And I didn’t have any static feeling. I just worked. God did it. And he will do it in your life as well. There’s no sense walking around hoping you’re going to heaven. There’s no sense trying to go to heaven. And I’ll show you that today. There is a way you can know. The Bible says these things are written so that you may know that you have eternal life. He that has a son has life, and he that has not the Son of God hath not life. 1 John chapter 5, somewhere down in chapter 5, those verses are found. I don’t remember exactly off the top of my head, but I remember the verses. Okay, now, what we want to talk about today on this radio show, if you’re listening, is As I would like to let you know, we have added a lot more stations. We’ve taken away a couple. But we probably, right as of this broadcast, we’re up to about 50 radio stations across America. 50 stations we’re broadcasting on every Sunday morning. And that’s a huge leap of faith, I promise you. The budget for that is absolutely a lot. So please pray for us. Pray for God’s wisdom. as we continue to advance the show, maybe even more than that. It’s a great time, a great opportunity, great times of history for us to be reaching out to those who are positive, to those who are interested, to those who might take note. And so today, if you’re a new listener, this is called the FLOT line, F-L-O-T, and it stands for the Forward Line of Troops, F-L-O-T, Forward Line of Troops. The military metaphor is about you learning at least 10 unique problem-solving devices, so that you can use them, store them in your soul, and use them in times of adversity, so that you can stop the outside sources of adversity from ever becoming the inside sources of stress. There are unique problem-solving devices in the Bible. This is not something new. We haven’t written a book bestseller on this thing. I learned these from my pastor years ago. But if you will learn them, you will use the 10 problem-solving devices called a FLOTLINE, you will find the greatest joy and the greatest happiness while you’re here on this earth that you could ever experience. However, there is a downside. When you don’t follow the protocol plan of God, when you reject it and you decide to go down the my way highway, then you’re setting yourself up for what I call self-destruction. You have the power to destroy your own life and you have the power to make a great life. It all depends on your volition and your decisions. So the study I want to do with you for the next few moments is called the study on the power of arrogance. The power of arrogance. The power of arrogance to create chaos and cause self-destruction. I remember after I became a Christian, I had to learn about sin. And I thought I was doing pretty good. I learned that sin could be something you say. Sin could be something you do. Sin could be something you think. And I thought, okay, I got a grip on sin now. I don’t want to be sinning too much. And I learned how to confess my sins. Problem-solving device number one, the rebound technique. If we confess our sins, he’s faithful and just to forgive us and purify us from all wrongdoing. I learned that was the key to the filling of the Holy Spirit, which is problem-solving device number two. which gives me the ability to override the desires of the flesh. If we walk in the spirit, we won’t fulfill the lust of the flesh. And so I had to learn these things. So I learned about sin, sin, sin. And then all of a sudden, somebody taught me about evil. And I went, uh-oh, I thought all sin was evil. Well, it is. But evil is actually a system. You see, God’s system is grace. For by grace are you saved through faith. It’s a gift from God. It’s grace. We live by grace, we die by grace, but there is a counterfeit system. This counterfeit system is called evil, and evil can manifest itself in many ways, especially in organized religion where people are saved by not grace, but by something they do, trying to earn their way to heaven. We’ll show you that here in just a minute. So you have to be careful, because I had to learn about sin, I had to learn about evil, and then all of a sudden, My pastor began to teach me about arrogance. And oh, did my eyes get opened. I had to learn about arrogance. I had to learn about self-justification, self-deception, self-absorption, and eventually self-destruction. And in the short time we have here today, this is what I want to talk to you about, how you can destroy your own life by being arrogant. The key verse is Romans 12, 3, where Paul wrote, stop thinking of yourself in terms of arrogance, beyond what you should think, but think in terms of sanity as God has assigned to each one of us a standard of thinking from his word. Now, that standard of thinking from his word is called divine viewpoint. And you can think divine viewpoint, and that’s thinking God’s word. What does the Bible say about this? Or you can think human viewpoint. And human viewpoint is what do my friends say about this? Or what does the world say about this? Or what does AKA the devil say about this? If you apply that into morals, you’ll find this, that things that used to be good have now become evil, and things that used to be evil are now accepted as good. Because human viewpoint now says, well, that’s really okay. It’s a natural and accepted type of life. When divine viewpoint says, no, it’s not, it’s a sin. So you have to decide which one you’re going to follow. Are you going to follow what the Bible says, or will you follow what you think is right, what your friends convince you is right? You know, the Bible says in Proverbs 3, 7, don’t be wise in your own eyes. That is self-evaluation, that’s arrogance. That’s you having an unrealistic self-image. If you have an unrealistic self-image, you have unrealistic expectations. If you think you’re one thing and you’re not and God treats you in a way you’re not worthy of being treated, you might be shocked. For example, many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did I not do this and did I not do that? And the Lord said, I will tell them I never knew you. Depart from me. Religious arrogance is terrible. And I’ll show you that here in a minute. Today we look at individual self-destruction, and hopefully we’ll take a look at national self-destruction. But here’s a principle I want you to remember. I’d like for you to get this in your brain, if you would. Without divine wisdom, without divine wisdom, that’s the Bible doctrine found in the pages of Scripture. Without divine wisdom, man would destroy himself and those around him. since we are so easily manipulated by the ideas of Satan. Thus, we have God’s laws and actions to prevent that from happening. What God wrote down in the Bible and recorded in the scriptures is to keep you from destroying yourself. He didn’t try to keep you from having a good time in life. God’s not trying to shut off the fun faucet. What God is doing is saying, if you will listen to me, you won’t self-destruct. But people don’t listen. People go down the my way highway and they go into individual self-destruction by repeatedly sinning, repeatedly going negative to God’s laws, building up a tremendous amount of scar tissue in their soul, as we’ll look at here in a minute. And the end result is their heart becomes very hard and they wind up very miserable and they die very lonely. So here we go. The arrogance of trying to save yourself. The arrogance of trying to save yourself. Jesus taught this in Luke chapter 18. The Bible says Jesus used this illustration with some who were sure that God approved of them while they looked down on everyone else. That’s what religion does. Religion evaluates you and judges you if you don’t meet its standards. So Jesus went on to say, two men went into the temple courtyard to pray. One was a Pharisee, religious man. The other was a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and he prayed, oh God, I can just hear him now, can’t you? Oh God, thank you. I’m not like other people. I’m not a robber. I’m not a dishonest person. I haven’t committed adultery. I’m not like this tax collector over here. I fast twice every week and I give you a tenth of my entire income. This is what he was basing his salvation on. that he tithed, that he fasted, that he didn’t fornicate, that he didn’t lie. And so the tax collector, standing at a distance, Jesus said in Luke 18, 13, the tax collector stood at a distance and he would not even look up at heaven. And he became very upset and he said, God, please have mercy on me, I’m a simple sinner. Jesus said, I can guarantee that this tax collector went home with God’s approval. But the Pharisee didn’t. Because everyone who honors himself will be humbled, but the person who humbles himself will be honored. And there you have it. No one gets saved by giving tithes. No one gets saved by not drinking, not smoking, not cussing, not fornicating. We get saved the way everyone else gets saved. For by faith are you saved through grace. It’s a gift of God, not of work, lest any man would brag about it. Christ did it for us. Titus 3.5, not by works of righteousness which we’ve done, but But according to his mercy, he saved us by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit, which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Lord, so that being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. That’s it. And so if you want to destroy yourself eternally, if you want to wind up in the lake of fire, then turn away from the good news, the gospel, and turn to your own self-religious works and try to prove to God that you deserve to be in heaven. And you will find at the great white throne of judgment when the books of works are opened and all your works are evaluated, they do not measure up to the righteous standard of God. See, the Bible says there are none that are righteous, no, not one. All of our righteousnesses are like a filthy rag in God’s eyes. There’s no way you can approbate God. There’s no way you can satisfy the righteousness of God. That’s why the Bible says he that knew no sin was made sin for us so that we could be made the righteousness of God through Christ, through him. Individual self-destruction through religions is a sad, sad, sad state of affair, but it happens. Individual self-destruction like Mark 7, 20 through 23. And he said, what comes out of a person is what defiles that person. For from within, now this is the sin nature. You have one and I have one. For by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin. And now death comes upon all men for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. This is your sin nature. You may try to cover it up by being good, nice, moral, sweet, but here it is. And he said, what comes out of a person is what defiles him. The word defiles is the Greek word meino, and it means what’s in the toilet. For from within the sin nature, or out of the heart of man, comes evil thoughts. That’s the thinking of Satan, the counterfeit thinking of Satan through religion. sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, errors, listen, all of this, slander, pride, foolishness, all of these things come from within, and they defile a person. They put you in the sewer. Wow, so you have the capability to make a mess out of your life if you let your sin nature control you. And arrogance is just the door that it’s looking for to get in. Self-justification overrides all the divine mandates of the Bible. The Bible may tell you don’t fornicate, and you fornicate anyhow because you say, well, we love each other, and it’s okay. The Bible may tell you that homosexuality is wrong, and you may say, no, it’s not. We love each other, and it’s okay. When you justify your actions, you override divine mandates. So from self-justification, you go to self-deception. And self-deception overrides any implanted truth. Maybe your parents gave you. Maybe your pastor gave you years ago. You learned something. You heard something. But now you’ve kicked it out. You’ve rejected it. And you override it with your own wisdom. Do not be wise in your own eyes, the Bible said. But here you are. Now, all of a sudden, you’re smarter than God. Now, all of a sudden, you got it figured out, and the Bible’s wrong, and God didn’t really mean that, and those words don’t really mean that, and you are kidding yourself. But that’s okay. It’s your life. You can live it any way you want to live it. God will not interfere, I promise you. If you want to live that way, have at it. But I can promise you one thing. There’s judgment coming and you will face him. Self-justification, self-deception, self-absorption. Self-absorption overrides self-preservation. When you should be striving to live a normal, happy, wonderful, beautiful life as God designed, you go the opposite direction and you lose the ability to preserve yourself. You wind up dying. If you’re a believer, they’re sent unto death. If you’re not a believer, you wind up making some stupid decisions that cost you a fortune and fame and happiness in your life. Self-destruction overrides God’s provisions of grace. He never designed you to live that way. He never designed you to destroy your own life. But because of your arrogance, you did. You justified sin. You deceived yourself into thinking it was okay. And you became totally self-absorbed with it to the point of where it destroyed you. And you missed out on all of God’s wonderful provisions. Listen to Proverbs 26, 12. Do you see a man who’s wise in his own eyes? Listen to the next part now. Do you see a man who’s wise in his own eyes? There’s more hope for a fool than for him. Proverbs 26, 12. There’s more hope for a fool than for him. Wise in his own eyes. Here’s the principle. It’s better to be a fool than to be an arrogant idiot because the fool at least might learn something and the arrogant idiot thinks he knows it already and God’s got to be wrong because it just feels right to him. Proverbs 11.2, with arrogance comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom. The wisdom that God wants to give to you is found in Proverbs where it talks about wisdom. So much is there. It gives you discernment, insight, understanding, knowledge. And this is what God is looking for, someone who understands him. God said, I want you to know me, but I also want you to understand me, Jeremiah 9. That’s what he’s looking for. And if you get God’s knowledge, you will understand God. You will have insight and discernment, which we call spiritual x-ray vision. You’ll be able to see through the fog, the smoke screen that Satan throws up that the world cannot see through. So with humility comes wisdom. Humble yourselves before the mighty hand of God, the Bible says. In Philippians 2, it says, Our Lord humbled himself and made himself of no reputation. The greatest thing that you could do is to humble yourself before the Word of God and believe it and apply it into your life. Arrogant people won’t do that. They won’t take time to study. They won’t take time to go to church. They don’t believe the Bible. They don’t believe God’s right. And they think they found a better deal. Good luck. When God in his infinite wisdom says, don’t do that, but you in your own arrogance justify the action, then you are guaranteeing a life of misery. Has it ever occurred to you why God said don’t do that? Could it be it’s to protect you from the traps of Satan who lures you into self-destructive tendencies and habits that you can’t control? And if you do those things enough, then you will develop scar tissue. Say, what’s that? Ephesians 4.18, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart, and having become calloused, they give themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greed. darkened in the understanding. They don’t understand what they’re doing. They can’t see it. Excluded from the life of God. That’s outside the plan of God. Because of ignorance, no wisdom. Because their hearts got hard and they became callous. There’s some people you just can’t reach. You may have a child or a relative you’re just not gonna reach. And whatever you say, they’re not gonna believe it. And that’s their choice. It breaks your heart, it breaks my heart to see it happen, but it’s gonna happen. Because arrogance is just that strong. You gotta understand the strength of arrogance. But when God said he loved you, that wasn’t a joke. He proved it by providing forgiveness through Christ our Lord. But you know, the fool says in his heart there is no God. Psalm 14.1, Psalm 53.1. The fool says in his heart there’s no God. However, an idiot can go outside and look up at the stars at night and say somebody must have created that. I mean, that’s too much order. It’s too amazing to say it just happened by incident. This is the thing that God is always looking for. He’s always looking for that person that wants to know him. And I hope you’re that person. I hope you want to know him. I hope you want to learn everything you can about God and his word. I hope you want the understanding of God and the knowledge and the wisdom that comes from understanding him. with the insight and the discernment that he gives you. Psalm 53, 2, God has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if there’s anyone who understands and who seeks after him. Right this very moment, as this radio show is being played in over 50 states across America, 50 cities across America, God’s looking at those of you that are listening. I promise you, he knows you’re listening. I promise you something else. He knows the intentions and the desires of your heart. And I promise you something else. He can cleanse you from your sin and forgive you. He’s not mad at you. He hasn’t thrown you away. You’re still alive. You still have purpose and meaning. all you have to do is rebound. If you have never believed in Christ, that’s the first step, to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and throw yourself on the mercy of God and admit you’re a sinner and you want to be saved. And secondly, if you are a Christian, then simply to come to the Father and confess your sin as the prodigal son did in the book of Luke 15. Father, I’ve sinned against heaven and against thee, and I’m no more worthy to be called your son. And of course, the father said, that’s nonsense. You are my son. I’m glad you’re home. God hasn’t turned his back on you. You turned your back on him. And guess what? He’s just been loving you from behind the whole time. He never threw you under the bus. He never rejected you. You rejected him. and now is your time to make a decision. Get ready to turn around and come back to the Father that loves you, the Father that has a plan for your life. If by chance you truly want to know God, it starts with accepting Christ as your Savior, since it was the Lord Jesus Christ who redeemed you out of the slave market of sin and reconciled you to God. So 1 John 5, 1 says, whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. There it is. In 1 John 5, 4 and 5, for whatever is born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. And who is the one who overcomes the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? The world is full of evil. The world is Satan’s domain. It’s full of Satan’s lies, deception. You believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you’ll have a chance to make it through the devil’s world. I promise you. Now what about national destruction? Arrogance is also related to national destruction, like national pride. That’s kind of an unrealistic self-image leading to boasting about how great a nation is, but a nation can become just as arrogant as an individual and fall under divine discipline as well. Leviticus 26, 19, I will break down the arrogance of your power I will make your skies like iron and your land like bronze. I understand the skies in California are looking like bronze right now. I have a daughter that lives out there, and she sends me pictures of the smoke-filled skies, and you can’t even see the sun. But when a nation such as ours begins to condone evil… and call evil actually good, and call good actually evil, then you can see the chaos that’s coming. When the rule of law goes aside, the system now of government changes to a more progressive style, favoring socialism and cursing capitalism, you can see what’s coming. When the divine institutions like marriage and family and freedom and nationalism begin to crumble, All these things occur as a result of satanic intrusion into government for the purpose of shutting down the spread of Christianity. That’s what it’s all about. Satan’s primary objective is to shut down the spread of the gospel across the world because any person who believes in Christ puts him one step closer to going to the lake of fire, him being the devil. Anytime someone believes in Christ, Satan’s one step closer to going to the lake of fire. So if we are a client nation and we are sending out missionaries, what do you think Satan wants to do? Shut us down. And how is he going to do it internally? Client nations exist like us to advance the gospel, and thus he will attack the client nation from within and then eventually from without. Hosea chapter four talks about how a client nation is destroyed, and I don’t have time to go into all of it. I’ve done it before, but I’ll tell you this part of it. He says, my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you rejected knowledge, I will reject you, and you will no longer be a priest for me, seeing you forgot the laws of your God. I will forget your children. Your children, your grandchildren will not have a future because you don’t have a knowledge of the word of God. You don’t have the understanding of divine wisdom in your soul. You were so arrogant you thought you were wiser than God and you’re not. You’re setting yourself up for self-destruction and you’re guaranteeing your nation will be destroyed as well until you recover and begin to think correctly. The only solution is a divine solution. And that solution is when people like you and I begin to think properly, when we begin to apply the word of God, when we begin to be invisible heroes and influencers in God’s plan, then we can make a difference in this nation, not through politics, but through our own spiritual lives. I pray you’re listening. I pray you’re taking notes and keeping attention. If you need any assistance, let me know. and I’ll come back next Sunday, same time, same place. 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.
