In this episode of The Flotline, Rick Hughes equips listeners with the knowledge and tools needed for the spiritual warfare we face daily. From the armor of God to the essential equipping of the Helmet of Salvation, Rick provides insights on maintaining unwavering faith and strength. Learn how to stay grounded amidst the diversions of the world and keep momentum in your spiritual journey by letting the Word of God guide you.
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 Rick Hughes, your host, and I’d like to invite you to stick around for a few minutes of motivation, a little inspiration, a whole lot of education, and done with no manipulation. The Flotline is a show that’s trying to give you some information about how you can verify and identify the plan of God for your life. If you are interested, you can listen, you can verify and identify that plan, orient and adjust to the plan. That’s your choice, but my job is to give you accurate information. You might want to ask yourself, how do these shows benefit me? Well, that’s a fair question. As I expand and add additional costs for production and broadcast, I take comfort in God’s grace provisions. He provides the finances, and he provides the inspiration for these messages, but the objective is to make you wealthy, to make you wealthy, not financially, no, no, no, but spiritually. In 2 Corinthians 4, 7, the Bible says we have this treasure in our earthly vessels, treasure in our earthly vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves. The treasure is the Greek word thesaurus, thesaurus. It’s a word treasure. The word treasure in our soul is the living mind of Christ, the word of God, living and living inside of you. Where the Bible says the word of God is alive and powerful and sharper than a two-edged sword, we’ll look at that today. It can live in you. It’s called the mind of Christ. And Paul wrote, so that their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love and attaining all the wealth that comes from the full assurance. of understanding resulting in a true knowledge of God’s mystery. That is, Christ himself and whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Understanding, treasures, wisdom, knowledge, attaining all the wealth. That’s learning God’s word, understanding God’s word, developing it into a wisdom in your soul so that you have insight, discernment, Listen to Proverbs 3. How blessed is the man who finds this wisdom for the man who gains understanding. For the profit of wisdom is better than the profit of silver, and the profit of wisdom better than fine gold. Wisdom is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her. The wisdom of the Word of God is what I offer you, and if you will learn it and apply it into your life, you will be wealthy beyond measure. wealthy in the way that you live your life, happiness in spite of circumstances, not being dependent on the details of life to provide anything for you because Paul said, I’ve learned whatever set of circumstances I’m in to be happy. It doesn’t make any difference if I have a lot or a little. It’s not the issue. The issue is always has been this amazing life called the Christian life. It’s an amazing life. And we started a study a few weeks ago about how you must put on the armor of God, as the Apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians 6, 11 through 18, because we’re in a war. We’re in a war for your thoughts. We’re in a war for your thinking. We’re in a war that Satan wants to win by distracting you and defeating you and discouraging you and eventually disgracing God if he can. because that’s what he wants to do. He wants to impugn the name of God, and he doesn’t want to go to the lake of fire, and he’s trying his best to get out of going to the lake of fire by using you as an example. Are you willing to become a mature believer? Are you willing to strap on the armor of God and stand in the war against Satan, the angelic conflict that we face every day in your life? Let me read that passage again. In Ephesians 6, 11, put on the aorist active imperative of enduo in the Greek, which is a command from God. Put on the full panoplia, the full armor, the panoplia, the Greek word says, every piece of the armor. Why? So that, as a purpose clause, so that you will be able to stand against the strategy of the devil. For the struggle that we fight is not against flesh and blood, but against rulers and That’s archaic, that’s demon rulers against the powers, against the world forces of darkness, against spiritual forces of wickedness, even in heavenly places. Because of this. Verse 13 of Ephesians 6, it’s for this that you need to put on every piece of the armor of God so that you will be able to resist in the evil day and having done everything to continue to stand, not be a casualty. Stand firm, lock and loaded, brace your feet, therefore having your loins girded about with truth, put on the breastplate of righteousness and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. In addition to this, take up the shield of faith, which you shall be able to quench the fiery darts of the wicked one. And verse 17, where we will pick up with today and move on. Now, this will be the third lesson on the armor of God. We do have transcriptions of all of this. If you’d like to read it, we can supply you a transcript. or we can supply you the MP3. You can get it on our podcast through Apple, through Spotify, through Breaker, through Anchor. You can get it on our website, rickhughesministries.org. If you’d like to listen to it again, just go to the rickhughesministries.org and look at the FLOT line, F-L-O-T, Forward Line of Troops. It’s all there for you. This information is for you to give you spiritual wealth, to keep you standing in the face of adversity. So we’re going to begin with verse 17 now in Ephesians 6 and pick up where we started, where we left off with the last show. And verse 17 begins a new sentence because the former sentence was between verse 14 and 16. And now we have a new mandate in verse 17. Listen to this. And take, take, the Greek word dekomai means to take hold of, to accept what is offered. And it is an aorist middle imperative. The morphology of that verb is important because, again, it’s an imperative mood. It’s not asking you, please do this, please do this. It’s telling you, do this. The aorist sense is a perpetual aorist, which means there’s never a point in time as a believer that you’re not to have on the armor of God. And the middle tense, the middle voice here says you’ll be benefited by this. This is to your benefit to have this happen to you. It’s a deponent verb, we call it, and the subject receives the action of the verb by means of God the Holy Spirit and the living Word of God inside of you. This is how you strap on the armor, being filled with the Holy Spirit. If you know how, that’s problem-solving device number one, rebound, because you will sin, you will fail, you will fall, but you can get up, you’re not a casualty yet. If you’ll simply go to the Father in 1 John 1-9 and name your sin as the Bible says, if we confess our sin, if we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us and purify us from all wrongdoing. That’s a big if, that’s a subjunctive mood. If, maybe you will, maybe you won’t. But if you will do that, you can maintain the filling of the Holy Spirit. because there’s a battle within you, not just this battle we’re talking about now from Satan, but also the battle of the flesh, because the Bible says the flesh wars against the spirit, and the spirit wars against the flesh. They’re contrary to each other, and what they’re trying to do is control your thoughts, control your thinking. The flesh wants you to live by your emotions. The Holy Spirit wants you to live by the wisdom of the Word of God that’s circulated into your soul, into your stream of consciousness. And this is always the way that it is. And you have a choice to make. Either you can put on the helmet of salvation, or you can continue to bounce around, never knowing really what you’re doing. The helmet of salvation in verse 17, this new sentence, put on the, in verse 17, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. So this last sentence, decomai, means to take hold of, to accept it. And you do that by being filled with the Holy Spirit and by learning and living in the Word of God. The helmet of salvation refers obviously to one thing. It goes on your head. It protects your thoughts. The first thought you have to protect is called eternal security. And this is what Satan would seek to cause you to doubt your lack of salvation. Satan would love for you to doubt trusting God’s word. He wants you to not trust God’s word. Some people say, how can I really know for sure I’m going to heaven? Because the Bible says so. These things are written so that you might know that you have eternal life. He that has the Son has life. He that hath not the Son of God hath not life, 1 John 5. If you have believed in Jesus Christ, you have eternal life. And the Lord Jesus Christ said, I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. I give unto you eternal life and you will never perish. Neither shall anybody ever pluck you out of my Father’s hand. That’s amazing. That’s a promise for you. And if you don’t have on the helmet of salvation, Satan can attack those thoughts in your mind. So let’s get that straight. Have you trusted in Christ? Have you made a decision to receive him as your savior? If you have, you’re saved. Saved from what? Saved from the second death, the lake of fire. Saved for eternal life. You’ll have a resurrection body. You’ll spend eternity with the Lord where the Bible says the ear hasn’t heard, the heart hasn’t known. No one’s ever even seen the amazing things God has for you. It’s yours, so don’t let Satan steal those thoughts away from you. Put on the helmet of salvation. That’s an act of your volition where you decide to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and you decide to consistently take in the Word of God, and it reinforces your thoughts and Sometimes one person of influence in one generation can go wacky, and then several generations later, everybody’s wacky. That’s how Satan works. He works further down the road than you realize. It’s not just today. He’s not just trying to influence you today. He’s trying to influence the next generation. You can see that in politics today. Good grief. Who knows what’s going on? And Satan is well at work in our nation and he’s well at work towards you. He doesn’t want you ever to glorify God in your life in any way, shape or form, any way. So you must strap on this helmet of salvation. So let me give you some principles here. One, the helmet protects the head where your thoughts circulate in your stream of consciousness. Again, we’re back to where you live your spiritual life, it’s in your head between your ears and your brain. This is where you live the spiritual life. And that’s why God said, as a man thinketh in his heart, so he is. The real you is what you think. And that’s where you have to learn to have the victory over what you do. It starts with what you think. Everything you do starts with a thought and it becomes a decision and it moves into an action. But everything starts with a thought. What do you think? How do you think every day of your life? Do you have a flat line in your soul? Are you filled with the Holy Spirit? Do you use a faithless drill? So putting on the helmet of salvation is watching what you think, putting the word of God in your soul, staying filled with the Holy Spirit. And two, Satan’s objective always has been to distract you in several ways, using the lure of the world, using the lust of the flesh, or even using satanic viewpoint, which is the machinations of the cosmic system called evil. I do a lot of fishing, and I know about lures. I went fishing the other day and caught some bass using a spinnerbait as a lure, and it tricked the bass and allowed me to catch them. And then I always like to kid about it. I do CPR on every fish that I catch. CPR. No, I don’t blow into their mouth. CPR stands for catch, photograph, and release. So you can trick a fish by biting a false lure, a false bait, it’s not the real thing. And this is what Satan’s very good at, to distract you and trick you by several ways, using the lure of the world. You know, money will make you happy, marriage will make you happy, people can make you happy, circumstances will make you happy, a new job will make you happy, a new school will make you happy. A new husband, a new wife will make you happy. That’s wrong. That’s a lie. So his objective is to lure you into the flesh, into the lust of the flesh. And if that doesn’t work, to lure you into the cosmic system, which is evil. God’s system is called grace. Always has been grace, always will be grace. For by grace are you saved through faith. And it’s a gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should brag about it. Evil is the opposite of grace. What evil does is it takes God’s word and twists it so that you think you’re doing the right thing and you’re not. Evil is put a chicken in everybody’s pot, love everybody, be sweet and kind to everybody. Well, certainly Christians should love everybody. Certainly Christians should help everybody. But that’s not the spiritual life. Spiritual life is much greater than what the world can come up with. And the most evil thing in the world is religion, organized religion, because it’s you trying to approbate God with your good works, trying to tell God how great you are. When the Bible says there are none that are righteous, not even one, all of our righteousnesses are like filthy rag in God’s eyes. That’s why Christianity is not religion. People say it all the time. It’s a relationship. It’s Christ living in you through faith. Christ in you, the hope of glory, the Bible says. So again, two, Satan’s objective is to distract you. by several ways using the lure of the world, the lust of the flesh, or even satanic viewpoint, which is the machinations of the cosmic system called evil. Three, if you establish consistent momentum in your spiritual life, then you will be guarding your thoughts and less likely to wander astray. Consistent momentum. Four, what is momentum? Momentum is you always advancing in spite of temporary setbacks. It’s you picking up speed as you advance to the high ground of spiritual maturity, which is where God wants you to be. Hebrews 5, we quoted that in one of our earlier studies in this passage, says you’ve been saved a long time, and you ought to be teaching others, but you’re not. You still need a bottle. You still need milk. You’re still a baby. And that’s the writer of Hebrews. Whoever wrote it, we don’t really know, but he came down hard on Christians. that have been saved a long time and still don’t know their way around the Bible, still don’t know their way around what God’s protocol plan is even all about. So momentum is you picking up speed as you advance to the high ground. That’s what God’s plan is about. He wants you to grow to be a mature believer and give him maximum glorification in your life. And you cannot do it if you’re just a baby Christian. If you’re getting knocked off the pole every time you try to stand up, boom, down you go. If you’re not advancing spiritually, you’re not moving towards the high ground. And that means you’re learning, maintaining, using God’s word in a consistent basis in your life. That’s what momentum is. Sitting under a great pastor who’s teaching you the Bible and you writing a few notes down, going home, look at your notes and applying it into your life. So five, what you are seeking to obtain is poise. or the ability for you to be able to think under pressure. Not to emote under pressure, to think. Not to get into a self-pity, not to have a pity party, but to think. Outside adversity can create a lot of stress in your soul if you let it. by worrying or bitterness or some other mental attitude sin that’ll get you out of fellowship really, really quick. And then Satan loves that. He just laughs at you when you do that. When you go into your little pity party, he just takes a laugh at you. And we all have our things we could feel sorry about, our health, our finances, whatever it is. When you start focusing on that and forget the issue, Christ in you, the hope of glory. When you forget what Paul said doesn’t make any difference whether I have a lot or whether I have a little, that’s not the issue. When you forget that, and you focus on yourself and you have your little pity party, then Satan laughs at you. It’s time for you to grow up. It’s time for you to quit letting bitterness or some other mental attitude sin control your life. So point six, every day the believer with momentum seeks to increase his inventory of biblical knowledge by learning and applying the Word of God into his soul. He seeks to increase his inventory of biblical knowledge by learning and applying the Word of God into his soul. You can’t learn if you can’t hear. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word of God, the Bible says. If you’re not listening to the Word of God being taught, you’re not growing. It’s just that simple. Oh yeah, you read your Bible. I’m glad to know you read your Bible. You took your Bible in the deer stand with you this year and you read your Bible. That’s not growing. Growing is sitting in a private auditorium under a pastor, listening to him teach the Bible to you in privacy of your own priesthood, taking your notes, go home, read over your notes, pray over your notes, apply your notes into your life and move forward. You saying, oh, I just go out into the nature and I sit under a tree and I commune with God. You’re kidding yourself. You’re not communing with God. You’re communing with the woods, the crickets, the birds, whatever’s out there. But that’s not God you’re communing with. If you want to commune with God, get into his word because that’s where he is. And if God wants to speak to you, He will speak to you from his word. You won’t go out in the woods and hear some audible voice going, yoo-hoo, it’s me, God, I’m over here. That’s not the way it works. If you heard that, you need to see a doctor because that’s not right. So what you want to obtain is you having momentum in your life. It’s you increasing your inventory of biblical knowledge. So point seven, through spiritual growth, you acquire the mind of Christ and develop occupation with Christ. That’s problem-solving device number 10. The more you know about him, the more you’re occupied with him, the more you’re occupied with him, the more you reflect him, the more you reflect him, then you glorify God because you’re representing Jesus Christ to your family, to your friends, to your generation. Thus, if you will strap on the helmet of salvation, then you will be able to demonstrate patience with people, patience with circumstances, as well as maintain a proper perspective of not being lured into some short-time fix in your Christian life because there’s no such thing. You can go to some camp, you can throw a stick on a fire and promise God you’re never going to sin again, and that’s ridiculous. The Bible doesn’t say to promise God you’re never going to sin again. The Bible says name your sin and forget it and move on. You probably will sin again. We’re humans. We have a flesh. We have a human nature. That’s why we have rebound, so we can recover from our sins. The second part of this passage says we’re to pick up the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. Pick up the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. That word sword is the word machaira. The machaira was the Roman sharp two-edged sword that they conquered the world with. I’ve got several Makairo replicas in my office, an amazing piece of work, about two feet long with a cut to the left, cut to the right, and go straight ahead. It’s a double-edged sword. It’s not like a Zoro sword where you fence somebody and just have to stick them. It’s not that kind of sword. It’s not a ramaphalia, which is a giant sword like Goliath had. It’s a two-edged sword that the Romans used. When they stood back to back and fought shield to shield and shoulder to shoulder, they conquered the world with that machaira. And so this is what Paul is using. It’s a common weapon of war, the sword. Point one, the sword is a common weapon of war. Thus you see, by this analogy, we are at war with satanic forces. Hear me? We are at war with satanic forces. Now, that’s not the first time the sword has been used in the Bible. In Genesis 3.24, cherubim guarded the way back to the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve were kicked out. And they stood there with a flaming sword to keep them out. So cherubim guarded their way back to the Garden of Eden, keeping Adam and Eve out and not allowing them to access the tree of life. In 1 Samuel 17, 51, David used the sword of the giant to decapitate Goliath. That was that big ramphalia sword, a giant sword that he had. His battle armament. David went into battle based with what? Faith. He had a slingshot, he had a few rocks, and he had faith. He believed God. He didn’t chicken out and cower down like the rest of Saul’s army and his brothers up on the hill watching all of this because nobody was willing to go out there for 40 days and 40 nights. The giant insulted, slandered, maligned God, did everything he could to try to make him mad, and nobody would go fight him until finally the shepherd boy showed up, the future king of Israel. And it was, in fact, the sword of the giant that he decapitated his own, cut his head off with. And now in Ezekiel 21 three, God’s judgment on Israel is sometimes called his sword. In Ezekiel 21 three, and say to the land of Israel, thus saith the Lord, behold, I’m against you. I will draw forth my sword out of its sheath and cut off from those, the righteous and the wicked. The sword is a biblical word used for combat. God’s judgment is the sword coming out. The New Testament word is machaira, as I told you, and Jesus told his disciples, this may shock you somewhat, because sometimes self-righteous people always get a little shocked when they hear the truth. Jesus told his disciples in Luke 22, 36, that they should sell their cloak and buy a sword due to the impending crisis they were about to face. What? Are you telling me the disciples were harmed? Yes, I’m telling you the disciples were harmed. What do you think Peter pulled a sword out of his pocket when he cut off that guy’s ear when they came to arrest the Lord Jesus Christ? And the Lord had to put the guy’s ear back on and tell Peter to put your sword back in his scabbard. It was not time to fight. But they had to be armed. They were traveling in some perilous times, treacherous places. And he told them, go out and buy a sword due to the impending crisis. But he didn’t tell them to fight in a revolution. That wasn’t it. They had swords to protect themselves and to protect the Lord. I heard a pastor one time, he carried a weapon with him sometime, and people got on him and said, oh, brother, you have a gun? He said, yes, sir, I have a gun. They said, don’t you trust God, brother? He said, yes, I do. I trust God to make the bullet go right where I aimed it to go. Is it wrong to arm yourself? Not according to this passage, Luke 22, 36. That’s the sword. Paul used the sword as a symbol of his ability to defeat Satan using the sword of the Spirit, the weapon of the Holy Spirit. What is the weapon of the Holy Spirit? It’s the Word of God. That’s what this verse says. Another figurative use of the machaira is found in Hebrews 4.12. For the Word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than a two-edged sword. There’s the word machaira again. Piercing even to the dividing asunder the soul and the spirit and the joints of the marrow and is a discerner. of the thoughts and the intents of the heart. The cutting effect of God’s Word in your soul is brought out here. God’s Word, when you learn it and use it, will show you your flaws. It’ll show you your failures. And by use of the application, the sword of the Word of God will cut out the destructive trends of your flesh. Bible doctrine is truth. The Word of God is truth, alive and powerful. Nothing can overcome it. And if we use it, if we pick up the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, then we can defend ourselves against satanic attack. We must learn how to use our offensive weapon. We must be skilled in the knowledge of Scripture so that we can defend ourself and accurately represent our Lord in the day that Satan attacks us. That’s what the passage says, the day that you’re tested. Keep standing. Don’t fall down. Don’t be a victim of circumstances. Be victorious on the battlefield. That’s why Paul used this military analogy for you so that you can be victorious. How about it? How’s your victorious life going, victorious life going? What’s going on in your life? Are you being defeated by circumstances, by adversity that you’re facing in your life, causing you to fret and causing you to worry, causing you to be bitter and angry and mad? Are you upset over the politics of our time like so many people are? A lot of us are. but that’s not how you handle it. You use it with the Word of God. I gave you a class not too long ago about the Supreme Court of Heaven, and I told you nobody gets away with anything. The Supreme Court of Heaven is open 24 hours a day. Seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, the Supreme Court of Heaven is there, and God will make the final judgment on everything. So you can relax. You can take it easy. You don’t have to sweat it. Just let the Lord handle it. And using your sword means you go to the scripture, recall some verse that you’ve learned using the faith thrust drill problem, solving device number three, apply it into your life, And that’s using the sword to cut away the difficult circumstances in your life. That’s how it works. Faith, rest, drill. I hope you’re listening. I hope you’re learning. I’m speaking straight forth, not pulling any punches, not trying to be funny, but trying to be very serious here. Your future and the future of this nation depends on you and your spiritual life. As goes your spiritual life, so goes America. I hope you’re listening. I hope you’re paying attention. Until next week, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Floodline.
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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.
