Rick Hughes addresses the importance of developing spiritual discernment and wisdom in daily life. As the nation faces challenges that threaten the spiritual upbringing of youth, Hughes emphasizes how accurate content and parental guidance can foster discernment and avert spiritual complacency. Through engaging anecdotes and scriptural references, listeners are guided on how to align their spiritual journey with God’s ultimate plan for their lives.
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 Flotline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, you have a cordial invitation to stick around and listen to 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, some education, but never any manipulation. We don’t con people. We’re not trying to hustle your money. We’re not asking you to join anything. Simply want you to listen. Listen so I can verify and identify the plan of God for your life. And if I can do that, you have the freedom, the privilege to orient and adjust to the plan should you decide to do so. But this show, The Flatline, is always designed to remind you of biblical truths and introduce you to a different way of studying and learning God’s Word. Remember what I tell you every Sunday morning, that God gave you two ends. One of those ends you sit on and one of those ends you think with. And success in your life will depend on which one you use. Heads, you’ll win. Tails, you’ll lose. Today we want to talk about being spiritually brain dead. Spiritually brain dead. Now we’ve all been around people that are kind of brain dead just from the physical standpoint. They don’t know much. And you can tell they don’t know much by what they have to say. Whatever a person is in his soul comes out in his language. So if he just has a coarse, rough language with not many words, you can tell he doesn’t know a whole lot. But Solomon wrote the Proverbs that we have been looking at in the last week or two. We studied wisdom last week to inspire those people that are spiritually brain-dead. Spiritually brain-dead, people that don’t know much about the plan of God. This is the way that I was after I accepted Christ as my Savior. I was spiritually brain dead. I never had heard a word like regeneration or imputation or sanctification or any word like that. I didn’t understand anything about the second advent of Christ. I didn’t understand the filling of the Holy Spirit. I didn’t understand any of the nomenclature related to the spiritual life. So I had to learn how God’s plan operates. And it didn’t come overnight. I had to take time to study and learn under my pastor how the word of God works and what God expects out of me and what I was supposed to do. And so when Solomon wrote the book of Proverbs under the inspiration of God the Holy Spirit, his apparent objective was to stress the importance of having the wisdom of God. And he made it available for you and for me through his written words, and we call it the scripture. So listen as I read to you from Proverbs 1, 1 through 7, Proverbs 1, 1 through 7, referring to the wisdom of God. It says, quote, the Proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel, says, I write these for gaining wisdom and instruction, for understanding words of insight, for receiving instruction in prudent behavior, doing what is right and just and fair, for giving prudence to those who are simple, knowledge and discretion to the young, Let the wise listen and add to their learning and let the discerning get guidance for understanding proverbs and parables, the sayings and the riddles of the wise. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction. All right, I want to take a look at verse four particularly. One of the reasons that he wrote this Proverbs is for gaining prudence, for giving prudence to those who are simple, for giving prudence to those who are simple. The word prudence in the Hebrew, remember that the Old Testament was written in Hebrew and Aramaic and the New Testament primarily in the Koine Greek. And so as you begin to break these words down and study what we call the ice technique, I-C-E, ice. You know, like you want a Coca-Cola or a soda with ice. Ice, I’m gonna give you some big words here, but they’re important to understand them. Eis is the word isagogics or isagogical. And C stands for categories. And E stands for exegesis. So when we study the scripture, we exegete the scripture line by line, word by word. We develop categories, and the isagogics is the word itself, how it was used, where it came from, what’s its meaning. And so the isagogics of the word prudence is what I want to look at. Prudence is the Hebrew word ormah, and it means to give discretion or wisdom or subtlety, which is basically the state of being very subtle or having shrewdness or mental acumen. I never had heard that word before when I got saved, mental acumen. I didn’t know what acumen was. But being subtle is the act of conveying something in a skillful, clever way versus a direct manner. And it’s truly an art form, one that’s not easily mastered, I promise you. So being subtle is a tactic that allows you and me to maneuver in the devil’s world with without drawing a lot of attention to ourself. That’s not what we’re supposed to do. So let me give you some principles about being subtle because this is one of the characteristics of wisdom. An overbearing person, point one, is an obnoxious person. And that’s a person that doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. And I think we’ve done a study on this show before called 10 Times to Keep Your Mouth Shut. And if you’ve never heard that, if you’ll write to me, we’ll send it to you. Don’t send money. We’re not asking for money. But ten times you have to keep your mouth shut. And there’s a lot of reasons to keep your mouth shut. One of them is judging your neighbors and sticking your nose in other people’s business. But an overbearing person is an obnoxious person. They can’t keep their mouth shut. They’re always trying to straighten everybody else out. trying to run the show, it’s the alpha male, you know, the big dog, the goat, and the crowd, the greatest of all times, et cetera, et cetera. Two, a second principle about being subtle. This is an art form of thinking and communicating clearly without being obnoxious, without being overbearing, without being persistent. And three, this is wisdom of knowing when to speak and knowing what to say. Some people just gonna pipe up and get in the middle of the conversation and really have nothing to offer. but they just try to act like they know what they’re talking about and they don’t. And you’ve seen that before. I’ve seen it before. You could be having an intellectual discussion with someone about a subject and the person that doesn’t know anything about the subject wants to get in the middle of it and throw in some words. And they don’t, I mean, they just, it’s stupid. They don’t know what they’re even talking about. And so they shouldn’t be in the middle of the conversation. I’ve been in that position. I, When I first became a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, I heard people talking about things that I didn’t understand, and I wanted to be in the conversation. So I put my two cents worth in, and people looked at me like, where did that come from? You must be out of your mind. But I was trying to be noticed. I was trying to be recognized, and that’s part of being obnoxious, wanting to be recognized. So this is the wisdom of knowing when to speak and what to say. Subtle. And that’s prudence. Prudence is having accurate content. Content in all your directions or all your conversations. If you don’t have accurate content, then everything you’re doing is just wasted breath. That’s all. So five, when you speak, you must have clear thinking and you must have accurate content. So where do we get the content? That’s the question. Where do we get accurate content? That’s the wisdom that Solomon is offering us in this book. Paul in Philippians 1.9 said it this way. And this I pray, that your love may abound still more in real knowledge and discernment. Acumen, discernment, acumen, knowledge. Anytime you say you love God, and people do say that, I love God, are you telling the truth? Because 1 John 5 says, if you love me, you’ll obey me, and my mandates are not hard. Well, what’s one of the first mandates? Grow in the grace and knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Peter wrote. Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed. You love God and you’re not growing spiritually? You say you love God and you’re not obeying these mandates? You don’t love God. You’re emotionally attached to God. But to have sincere love for God is appreciation and respect and reverence for his character. Can you even tell me what is the essence of God, like sovereignty, righteousness, justice, love, immutability, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence? Do you know what these things even mean? I did not. I had to learn them. I had to have some wisdom. That’s part of being in the ministry. You got to know what you’re talking about or else you need to keep your mouth shut. And so Paul says, I want your love, your appreciation, your commitment to your Lord to grow in more knowledge and more discernment. Now keep in mind that knowledge can be translated two ways in the New Testament. It can be translated in the Greek word gnosis, G-N-O-S-I-S. And it can be translated in the Greek word epinosis. The difference in these two are the difference between hearing and keeping. When you hear the word of God and understand it, you have gnosis. But when you apply it into your life, it becomes epinosis, or full knowledge. Epi is a preposition meaning full knowledge. And that’s the objective of the Christian life. You go to church, you hear your pastor teach the Bible, and you want to apply it into your life. That’s why Jesus said, happiness belongs to those people who hear my Father’s word and keep it. And nobody’s perfect, but you can’t keep what you don’t know. And you can’t know unless you go and learn and listen. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. If you’re not listening and learning, you’re not gonna be growing. So when you speak, you have to have accurate content. And here in this verse in Philippians 1-9, we see the Apostle Paul stressing the very same thing Solomon did almost a thousand years earlier. So you just really have to ask yourself why the Bible keeps repeating the need for the believer to have discernment and understanding which is derived from wisdom in the soul. Why is this such a big issue? Why is it over and over and over again stressed? And the answer is simple. The spiritual life is lived in the soul. And you have a soul, I have a soul. We have mentality, we have volition, we have a conscience, and we have a self-consciousness. This is where we live our spiritual life. We live the spiritual life in the soul. We express what we believe in our body, in the action of our body and how we conduct ourselves. The soul’s mentality, the soul has volition. Thus, Satan wants to take advantage of us. Satan’s advantage in this world is to distort your thinking. That’s how he gets an advantage. Since you have mentality and volition, he wants to distort your thinking into terms called human viewpoint or humanism. This is the exact opposite of divine viewpoint, which is God’s plan for you and I to execute a successful spiritual life. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but Satan is known to have his own ministers in pulpits across our country today who preach human viewpoint. 2 Corinthians 11, 13 through 15. Therefore, it is not surprising that if his servants, that’s his ministers, also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, servants of God, whose ends shall be according to their deeds. So here we know for a fact that there are men and women in pulpits across America today that claim to be servants of God. and they’re not you know satan is known as the greatest deceiver in all of history to be this good of deceiver he must be the greatest and best liar in history and jesus said he was in john 8 44 the father of all lies and the greatest lie you could ever hear is this humanism or human viewpoint thinking it’s not the wisdom of god and so those people who stand in the pulpits and teach for satan are giving what’s called doctrine of demons, 2 Timothy 4.1. Some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and the doctrine of demons. That’s human viewpoint. That’s humanism, progressivism, socialism. This is not taught in the Bible. This is not part of the Word of God. So hopefully you can see that if the enemy can control what you think and what you believe, then he can control what you do. That’s the objective of the enemy. So we’re exhorted over and over and over again throughout the New Testament to learn God’s plan so we can execute and fulfill his desire for us so that we might in fact glorify him, not ourselves. Ephesians 3.20 says, all glory belongs to God, whose power is at work in us. Now, that power is dual power. It’s the power of the Holy Spirit, which is problem-solving device number two, the filling of the Holy Spirit by means of problem-solving device number one, confession of known sin to God. And it’s also the power of the Word of God inside of you. And that’s problem solving device three, the faith rest drill, and problem solving device five, biblical orientation. So when you have the word of God in your soul, and you are filled with the Holy Spirit, then God’s power is working in you. Thus, we have a demand from the New Testament that we become spiritually mature believers. 2 Peter 3.18. Grow, this is not a request, this is an order from Peter, this is a commandment. Grow in the grace and knowledge of your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Mandate it. If you’re not growing, you’re sinning. A Christian who doesn’t progress in the Christian life is going to go backwards. The rate of forgetting will exceed the rate of learning, and if it’s that way in your life, you are not growing. You must grow on a daily basis. You must be under the ministry of a good, qualified pastor who can teach you God’s Word so that you can learn it and apply it into your life. And more than Sunday morning, Don’t fall for the nod to God crowd, and that’s all you’re going to be. If that’s all you do, just go in on Sunday and show up. Hello, God. Goodbye, God. See you next week, God. That’s the nod to God crowd. and you wind up being a caricature of Christ, not the image of Christ. You got to learn to think like he thinks, and that’s why the Bible says it. Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. Well, the Bible says, 2 Corinthians 12, that the Bible is the mind of Christ. It is the mind of Christ. The New Testament is the mind of Christ. And we have it. And we are to grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So the importance of learning the wisdom of God is the educating of the simple or the spiritually brain-dead individual. How did that passage go when we started it a while ago? Let me back up in my notes and I’ll read it to you one more time. for giving prudence to those who are simple, for giving prudence to those who are simple. The simple people are the spiritually brain-dead people. And these are called, in the next part of that passage, the youth who need knowledge and discretion. Normally, youth are spiritually brain-dead. They have their mind on everything else except the plan of God. I never thought about the plan of God when I was growing up, but I didn’t grow up in a Christian home either, never went to church, never was told to go to church. And maybe you’re different. Maybe you started learning the plan of God when you were a young person. That’s fantastic if that’s true. My prayer is that you are not spiritually brain dead. So principle, if you can destroy the thinking of the youth, then you can destroy the client nation. If you can destroy the thinking of the youth, then you can destroy the client nation. Keep in mind the United States of America has been a client nation to God for many years. And if there’s one objective the enemy has, it’s to destroy this nation so that we do not send out missionaries to all corners of the world, so that we do not proclaim the gospel all across the world, so that we are not a haven for the Jews, so that we don’t operate under the divine institutions of marriage, family, freedom, nationalism. These are all important things to understand. So if you can destroy the thinking of the youth and capture their mindset and then you can destroy the future of any client nation. So point two, Satan’s attack on the client nation of USA, you hear it chanted, USA, USA. Satan’s attack on client nation USA is to capture the thoughts and the imagination of the youth who are ultimately, the future decision makers of this country. All right? And three, he does this through the abundance of social media, which is an appeal to the emotions and not a challenge to the intellect. Social media is an appeal to the emotions and not a challenge to the intellect. And if there’s anything that’s rampant on social media, it’s humanism. Humanism, human viewpoint. Four, emotions are a responder, not an initiator. Emotions give us the ability to have appreciation, but not any discernment. That requires thinking, and humanism promotes no thinking. Humanism promotes emotionalism. Humanism promotes the now and what’s happening right now, not any discernment or wisdom or insight or understanding. So five, accurate thought requires accurate information in the beginning. And that starts at home. And it starts with authority orientation at home. This is where the failure in America is today. There’s very little authority orientation at home. At home, too many broken families. Satan has been successful through divorce, breaking up many families, many families. And if it happens, then the parents break up, and then the kid winds up living like I did with a mother who had to work. And so she farmed me out to different guardians throughout the week, and I would live with different people and come home on the weekends, Friday night and Saturday night, I’d come home. Didn’t really know my mom that much because I was living with other people who did not teach me anything about God. Nothing about the word of God. So accurate thought requires accurate information beginning at the youth. Ephesians 6, 1 and 2 tells youth this right here. Obey and honor your parents. Obey and honor your parents. This is authority orientation. The first thing a parent has to do is teach the child, when I say no, I mean no. And obey is the Greek word hupotasso. Hupotasso means to be under the authority of. and the word honor is the greek word tamao tamao and it means to respect so the job of the young person at home is to obey the orders of the parents and to respect and honor their parents now that doesn’t mean if your mom tells you to go to the grocery store and steal a loaf of bread you’re supposed to do that you’re not obligated to commit a crime if your parents encourage you to do that. But you are obligated to be under their authority, and sometimes their authority is not always fair. And so then the question arises, are you going to react to unfair treatment, or will you respond to unfair treatment? That’s always the question in life. Even when you get a job, will you react or will you respond? Will you get mad and angry and let your emotions take over and blow it off and open your mouth and say something you shouldn’t say? Or will you respond with forgiveness and love? See, that’s the secret to the Christian life, being able to respond to adversity, not react to adversity. That’s why Proverbs 3, one through two says, my son, and this is David speaking to Solomon, do not forget my teachings, but let your heart obey my instructions. He made sure that Solomon had a good background in the word of God. So point six, failure to teach authority orientation at home results in a soul out of control. making decisions on arrogant self-centered emotions self-centered emotions remember arrogance is identified by self-justification self-absorption self-deception and self-destruction so if you justify why you’re right and your parents are wrong if you’re totally deceived if you lie to them you lie to yourself and you get totally absorbed with what you’re doing you’d wind up destroying yourself we all are about one or two decisions away from destroying our lives aren’t we And there are a lot of kids walking around today that are one or two decisions away from destroying their life because they’ve had no parental instruction, no wisdom given to them so they would have discernment and understanding. They’re easily manipulated by the enemy, aka the devil, and used by him to destroy a client nation. The next word in that passage we wanted to look at was the word simple. Give prudence to the simple. The Hebrew word for simple is pethah, pethah. And that means those who have no divine standards that result in foolish decisions are simply relying on their emotions not any content when making some sort of decision in life they are naive they are silly they’re seductible they’re easily persuaded and easily enticed the principle with no divine operating standards a young person is easily persuaded to step into sin he’s very credulous one who has a readiness to believe the lie Two, the simple-minded person has no biblical frame of reference. Three, with no basis to determine right from wrong, the subject person is easily persuaded to step into an arena he should not go into, he should not enter. And so, four, early exposure to sinful, flawed behavior It leads to scar tissue or hardening of the heart. And this is seen in Ephesians 4, where Paul said, being darkened in their understanding, they are excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them. Since they developed a hardness in their heart, they become callous and betrayed themselves into sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity and greediness. Paul said you didn’t learn this from Christ. Proverbs 1.4 continues, to the youth, knowledge, and discretion. The simple are the youth. They need knowledge and they need discretion. Youth is na’ar in the Hebrew. Na’ar, a boy, a youth, a lad, a servant, a damsel, usually under the age of 20. And they need knowledge, da’ath, the Hebrew word da’ath, which means perceptive ability built on wisdom and understanding. Without perceptive ability, the young person can not tell when they’re being manipulated. And the tragedy of American youth today is many have no ability to recognize the lie of socialism or the lure of humanism. One of the reasons for this flaw is the parents did not teach and did not demonstrate the wisdom of God to them at a very early age. There’s more to say about this. I’m running out of time, but I think I’ll try to come back and follow this up and continue with this next week. I hope you’ve been listening. I hope you’ve been paying attention. I hope it’s a challenge. Until next week, 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.
