SPEAKER 01 : 0:08

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

SPEAKER 02 : 0:23

Good morning, and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and I’d like to invite you to stick around for about 30 minutes of motivation, a little bit of inspiration, a whole lot of education, and absolutely no manipulation. No con games. If this is your first time to hear us, we’re not going to ask you for money. We’re not going to solicit money, not going to ask you to join up, fess it up, give it up, nothing like that. The only thing we ask is to listen up. Listen as I try to verify and identify the plan of God for your life. If I can do that, then you have the freedom and the privacy to orient and adjust to the plan. but the flat line playing all across America this morning in 80 plus radio stations from California to New York. And I’m so grateful to have the privilege to do that. We believe by faith the Lord opened that door and we walk through that door by faith. We’ve been teaching a series on ordinary people becoming extraordinary individuals. We’ve tried to demonstrate how God can take a person in obscurity with no publicity and no public relations image, no fame, no success, and turn him into an extraordinary individual. And there are a lot of metaphors in the Bible about these sort of people. We saw a whole series on women that were extraordinary and men that were extraordinary, that started out ordinary and became extraordinary. And today we want to continue on in that idea. But before I do, let me remind you of our website, rickhughesministries.org. There at rickhughesministries.org under the flatline, F-L-O-T, you can listen to all the previous radio shows. You can also, if you’d like, get us on podcast. We podcast on Spotify, Apple iPod, Anchor, Breaker, places like this that are Spotify podcast platforms, excuse me. And so if you go to a podcast platform and type in theflotline, F-L-O-T, you will see our symbol will cross with two circles, and you’ll be able to access the radio shows anywhere in the world by means of podcasting. And we do mean anywhere in the world. It’s amazing to see. the foreign countries where people have checked us out. I don’t know if they listen continuously, but when they come in and listen, the analytics lets us know, and it’s really amazing to see. So podcasting is available. If you’d like to do that in your car and Bluetooth it through your phone and get it coming through your speaker on your way to work, on your way to school. and listen to the Flatline. I hope you will, because we’re just teaching you the Word of God. We’re letting you make your own mind up, your own decisions up. We do the best we can with what we’ve got, and I think God is using it. If you could hear some of these letters I’m getting from individuals across the country, I’m so impressed with people that are hungry to learn God’s Word. Now today we want to continue on studying the ordinary man or woman who becomes extraordinary. Extraordinary. And what I’m about to tell you goes to men and women both. This is not just for the men, this is not just for the women like we did a couple of shows on that, but this is for all people. If you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, the objective that God wants you to be is for you to be the salt of the earth. That’s an analogy that the Lord Jesus Christ taught in Matthew 5, 13, the salt of the earth. And what does that mean if God wants you to be the salt of the earth? Well, number one, salt is used in the Bible for seasoning of food. Job talks about it in the book of Job, chapter 6, verse 6, and he said if tasteless food is eaten without salt, and you can’t eat tasteless food without putting salt on it. Is tasteless food eaten without salt? And here’s an analogy. Is a tasteless life lived without salt? You may be the salt that seasons the life of someone else in your community, in your family. This is an analogy, it’s a biblical analogy. And it means simply this, so the lack of seasoning is used to indicate human viewpoint thinking. Not divine viewpoint thinking, but human viewpoint thinking. We know this as evil, it’s the plan of Satan. It’s the humanism that floats around in our country today, the socialism that is espoused everywhere, as opposed to divine viewpoint, which is the plan of God. But when you have the word of God in your soul, it seasons your life and the way you think. Any one of us who lacks salt have no taste for spiritual things in our life. And you know, there’s nothing worse than being a pitiful wandering soul, maybe like you, who can never find your real reason for existing. I mean, is it just so you can gather things and more things and more things and then die? And who gets your things? There’s more purpose to your life than that. And you are to be salt. Salt is analogous to a mature Christian, and that sort of person can actually preserve his nation. Salt is a preservative. Matthew 9.50, salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? Have salt among yourselves and be at peace with each other. The greatest thing that you and I can do is to have salt in us. And that is the seasoning of the word of God in our soul. Because if we have that, our life has meaning and we have a blessing, we can bring blessing to our land, to our nation, to our family. But if we’re not salty, unsaltiness is analogous to a person who’s in reversionism. Some people may say a person that’s backslidden, a Christian who’s gone, turned around and went the other way. Or maybe a person that’s never been a Christian but has turned away from the divine institutions of freedom and marriage and family and nationalism and has bought into the concepts of socialism and communism. Unsaltiness is analogous to this sort of person. And it’s used to portray divine discipline. Listen carefully. Salt is good, Luke 14, 34. But if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? And the answer is it cannot. If it is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile, it will just be thrown out. So a person without salt, without biblical viewpoint in his life, Without divine viewpoint, just living on human viewpoint, socialism, humanism is cast aside as worthless. What a waste for your life to be. And listen, is your life worthless? No, it’s not. It’s very meaningful. God created you. God gave you life. God gave you an opportunity. God gave you a choice. And you’re going to make, you’re going to pay for those choices you make. I promise you that. As a man sows, so shall he reap. So each one of us are responsible for our decisions and bad decisions limit future options. The worst decision you could make is to be saltless, to be cast aside, to be worthless. When Christ died for your sin and freed you from the domain of Satan, and then you turn right around and march right back into the cosmic system as a deserter who went AWOL on God, you have no taste. In the Bible, salt was used in the Levitical offerings to represent eternal security. In Leviticus 2.13, season all your grain offerings with salt. Do not leave the salt to the covenant of your God out of your grain offering and add salt to all of your offerings. This is a wonderful thing about God. Once he gives you eternal life, he’s not going to take it back. It’s solid, it’s sound, it’s sealed. He said, I’ll never leave you, I’ll never forsake you. I give unto them eternal life and they will never perish, neither shall any man ever pluck them out of my Father’s hand. If you have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ and you have received him as your savior, you are secure, but your salt may have lost its effectiveness. This means simply one thing. You’ve gone through warning discipline and you did not listen. You’ve gone through intense discipline where you’ve hurt and you still did not listen. And you may be facing dying discipline where God will bring you home way too soon. I know God intends for some of you to live a long, wonderful, fabulous life. And you’re not going to do it because you’re going to turn and be a deserter and become saltless. In Genesis 19, 6, the Bible describes how Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt. And not the kind of salt you put on French fries either. It’s useless salt that was tramped underfoot. Here’s what the Lord Jesus Christ says about salt types. Matthew 5, 13, you are the salt of the earth. But if the salt has become tasteless, how could it be made salty again? It’s no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by people. That’s divine discipline. So the principle of this passage was this. when he taught this passage that Israel had turned away from the Lord. They had sent away their usefulness in the plan of God. John wrote about it and said, the ax is laid to the root of the tree. So divine discipline was coming. The whistle was blowing, and the train wreck was Titus, who came in 70 AD and destroyed Jerusalem. So our Lord had just finished teaching. When he said this in Matthew 5, 13, he had just finished teaching the Sermon on the Mount, just finished presenting the Beatitudes, his first major public message to his disciples. Disciples, methetes, disciples, and the multitudes who followed him, the oklos, multitudes, oklos is a Greek word, Note that he taught using what the Bible calls the rabbinic method, meaning he sat down as he taught. In Matthew 5, 1 and 2, he sat down on the mount. In Luke 5, 3, he sat down in the boat. In Matthew 26, 55, he sat down in the temple. In Luke 4, 20, he sat down in the synagogue. This is the rabbinic method of teaching. So we might consider that he taught these words. Blessed is a key word here I’m going to read to you. And blessed is the Greek word makidrios, and it means happiness. So when he sat down to teach the Beatitudes, this is what he was teaching, how to be happy. And this was a Jewish audience who were looking for the kingdom of God on this earth. But the Lord Jesus Christ had a different mission, different message to proclaim, and that was his death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. So he gave a seven-point outline of the character traits of the extraordinary individual followers. men and women, and note that it’s impossible to attain by self-efforts. It’s impossible to attain by religious traditions. These things are only possible for you if you are filled with the Holy Spirit and begin to live under the concept of divine viewpoint. These seven character traits produce what the Bible calls happiness. which we know as external joy. And it says, blessed are you. This is not an in-depth study of the Beatitudes, not by any means, a lot of people better at that than me, but this is just a small summary of the traits identified by the Lord Jesus Christ. And let me give you some footnotes from the NASB Bible. It says, the Sermon on the Mount’s call to moral and ethical living is so high that some have dismissed it as being completely unrealistic or have projected its fulfillment to the future millennial reign of Christ. But there is no doubt, they said, however, that Jesus gave the sermon as a standard for all Christians, realizing that its demands cannot be met on our own power. It’s also true the Lord Jesus Christ occasionally used hyperbole to make his point. For example, in Matthew 5, 29, he said, if your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it away from you. That’s hyperbole. He didn’t mean for you to tear your eyeball out. So this is what he’s teaching. Blessed are the poor in spirit. This is not referring, this is part of the Beatitudes, not referring to financial poverty, but to a spiritual dependence on the Lord. Intellectually humbled as opposed to religious arrogance. Blessed are those that mourn. Blessed is the word makarios. Happiness belongs to those that mourn. Happiness belongs to those that are poor in the spirit. Those that mourn, pentheo, those that weep or lament is the Greek word. This is happiness belongs to those who have a recognition of their failed condition in their nation or as individuals. If you can see yourself as you really are, you have a chance. Most people through arrogance have unrealistic self-image. And if they have an unrealistic self-image, they have unrealistic expectations. Some of you expect God to bless you because you don’t cuss. You expect God to bless you because you don’t smoke. You expect God to bless you because you don’t drink. You expect God to bless you because you don’t cheat on your spouse. Those are wonderful things that God does like for you to do, but that’s not where the blessing comes from. The blessing comes from the spiritual life of the individual. That’s what’s wrong in America today. Most of our churches are not teaching the concepts of the spiritual life. Most people don’t see what they really are. This is what arrogance does, unrealistic expectation, unrealistic self-image. It all comes in Revelation chapter 20 at the great white throne of judgment where people will try to earn their way into heaven by opening the books of works and saying, look what I did, look what I did, look what I did. And the father will say, I never knew you. I never knew you. Do you mourn for your country? Do you mourn for your neighbors? If you saw your neighbor’s house on fire, like in my neighborhood, if I saw a house on fire in the middle of the night, would I just sit there and say, go get the marshmallows, or would I rush over to alert them? Lost neighbors, your neighbors and my neighbors, are all facing the flames of hell, and we must wake them up. We must represent Christ and replicate his life and give them the gospel, the good news. Blessed are those that mourn, weep over the failed spiritual condition of a nation or of an individual. Blessed are the meek. That’s the broken ones that have lost their arrogance and have some genuine humility. Not Mr. Wimp, not Mr. No Shoulders walking around. I’m just such a humble little person. This is not what that means. Genuine humility is characterized by respect for authority. And the Bible says the beginning of the wisdom, the beginning of wisdom is to respect God. And you can’t respect God if you don’t have some meekness. You’re not smarter than God. God was in business before you got here and he’ll be in business when you’re gone. So it doesn’t all depend on you. But unless you can see yourself as you really are, You’ll never tap in to the happiness that the Lord Jesus Christ is speaking about in this passage. Happiness belongs to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Well, what is that? That’s a serious desire to learn the Word of God. That’s what we call positive volition. It’s a hunger, a spiritual appetite. It’s very rare for me to meet individuals that really want to learn the Word of God. Most people are satisfied. They go to church, they sing a few songs, they give a little money and they go home. Do Sunday school, do Wednesday night, whatever. Do a little community service and that’s fine. But they never really grow spiritually. And they’re like first graders and they stay in the first grade their whole life. The Bible says in Hebrews 5, 11 through 16, I have a lot of things I’d like to tell you, but I can’t give them to you because you can’t handle them. You’d still need a bottle, the writer of Hebrews said. These things are too deep for you. I don’t know how long you’ve been a Christian, but if you don’t understand the 10 problem-solving devices, if you don’t understand the essence of God, There are things you must understand about God’s protocol plan and how it works. If you haven’t learned these things, you’re still in the first grade. Let me give you an analogy. If you went to the first grade an hour and a half a week, how long does it take you to get out of the first grade? That’s 30 minutes on Sunday morning, 30 minutes on Sunday night, 30 minutes on Wednesday night, hour and a half a week of sermons. You’re never going to get out of the first grade. That’s why there has to be the daily, daily, daily intake of the Word of God. The way I do it is simply to sit down with my Bible, with my notebook, and my pastor makes available and other pastors that I know of make available studies that you can access on the internet or through DVDs or MP3s, and you can study daily. And I would tell you, you’re never gonna grow up spiritually until you begin a routine of daily intake of the Word of God and stay filled with the Holy Spirit. When you know you’ve sinned, confess that sin, Don’t hide it. Don’t try to act like you didn’t do it. Just name it to God and move on. Get up and keep going. So blessed are those that mourn. So, blessed are the meek, the ones that have lost their arrogance. Blessed are those that hunger and thirst for righteousness, the Lord Jesus Christ said. Spiritual appetite. Blessed are the merciful, those who extend mercy to others. Lest God judge, you forgive. Proverbs 11, 17, the merciful man does himself good. Those who extend mercy to others. And blessed are the pure in heart, those that are inwardly clean in fellowship, not having any hidden sins, free from all selfish intentions and free from self-seeking desires. Blessed are the peacemakers. That refers to reconciliation. The true sons of God, not the ones who propose war to achieve their goals. Listen to what Christ said about peacemakers. He said, peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you, John 14, 27. Peace is a fruit of the spirit. When Peter tried to defend him and drew a sword and took a whack at those that came to arrest him, wound up cutting a man’s ear off. The Lord said, put up your sword, Peter. By the way, Peter was armed. Did you get that? He was armed. It’s not your job to… to propose war on the enemy. It’s your job to be obedient. Put up your sword. There is a way to fight, and that is to let the Lord fight for you. Next in the passage comes a warning about persecution, where he said, be happy if you are persecuted for righteousness sake. What does that mean? Happiness belongs to you when you’re persecuted for righteousness sake. and this is all out of Matthew 5, and this simply means when there’s social disapproval, social discrimination, and it’s coming to America soon, political disapproval, and there are people that don’t like you because of who you voted for, there are people that don’t like you because you’re a Christian, and I’m going out on a limb here, but it’s coming a time when Christians will be persecuted in this country as they are in other countries. Listen to Matthew 5, 11. Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven. For so men persecuted the prophets who were before you. This is almost a guarantee that you are going to be persecuted for your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. You’re going to be persecuted because you believe the Bible and you have a Bible and you read your Bible. and you push biblical viewpoint on your community. Our communities have abandoned the Bible. We’ve become evil in a lot of places. So happiness belongs to you when men curse you, when they spread public lies about you because of your identification with Christ. John 15, 20, if they persecuted me, they’re going to persecute you. Rejoice and be glad, the Bible says, because your reward in heaven will be great. Rejoice and be glad. Your reward in heaven is going to be great, Matthew 5, 11 through 12. This is the sort of person that makes an impact on their world. The Lord uses these metaphors to explain the impact that they’ll have, the impact of being a salt believer, a salty believer. And he uses the impact of a person who has a light, like the light of the world. If an extraordinary person is you, and you’re that salty individual, you’re going to create a thirst for those who are in your area, excuse me, your contacts. You’re going to be a spiritual influencer. People will be around you and be attracted to you as you live under the pretense of the Word of God. As you learn it and you reflect Christ, they will be drawn to you, just like a light. People are drawn to a light in the middle of the night. As I drive down the highway in a dark night, I look across the field and see a light. I wonder who lives in that house. Who’s home? What’s it like over there? And if my car breaks down and I’m stranded, I’m going to go to the light. You are the light. You are the salt, Jesus said, right there in verse by verse. The Lord Jesus Christ preserves this nation, and you can do it as a member of the pivot. As a salty believer who is a preservative, as a believer who is light and attractive, you can help preserve this nation. If the basic character of salt loses its taste, the Lord Jesus Christ said, then it’s only be good to be walked upon, discarded, no purpose for its existence. So you, as a mature Christian, I had a guy ask me yesterday, what is a mature Christian? What do you think of that? What’s the answer to that in your mind? What is a mature Christian? And I will tell you simply this. He’s a person who stays filled with the Holy Spirit consistently, using rebound. He’s a person that operates under the faithless drill. He’s a person that understands grace and doctrine. He has a personal sense of destiny. He has virtue love for God. He uses impersonal love for his brother and He has great happiness in his life, and he’s occupied with Christ. There are the 10 problem-solving devices. That’s the character assets. Those are the character assets of the mature believer. So as a mature believer, you have a preservative effect in your client nation, USA, a preservative effect in your family because it’s called blessing by association. God blesses those you’re associated with. Remember this, remember this. God would have spared Sodom and Gomorrah if there had been only 10 righteous people in the land. Abraham got him down to 10. He said, if I find 10, will you spare the land? And the Lord said, yeah. I know there are more than 10 righteous individuals in America, but out of 300 plus million people, we got to have more than 300 righteous people if we expect to survive. Saltless salt is worthless. And this is the question I have to ask you before we wrap it up. Have you sent away your usefulness in God’s plan? Have you gotten out of fellowship and been sucked into the cosmic system? Because if you have, you’re going to be trampled down with divine discipline. This is the salt principle. It’s called the salt principle as of Matthew 5, 13, where we’re said to be the salt of the earth. Salt, that’s what God wants you to be. S-A-L-T, saved, S, saved. John 10, nine, I’m the door. If anyone enters through me, he shall be saved. For by the grace of God, you’re saved. That’s what salt is, a saved person. And A, he’s anointed, 2 Corinthians 1, 21 and 22. He’s anointed, he’s set apart for a specific task, and he’s a learner. Matthew 11, 29, take my yoke upon you and learn from me. I’m gentle and humble in spirit, and you will then find rest. He’s saved, he’s anointed, he’s been predestined. God’s chosen him for a specific reason. And he’s trusted, S-A-L-T, trusted. Trusted for what? Not to misrepresent God. The worst thing you can do is misrepresent God. That’s pitiful when you do that. So Proverbs 14, five, a trustworthy witness will not lie, but a false witness utters lies. Can God trust you with his word? Not to misrepresent him. Because the Bible says, study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. If it’s possible to rightly divide it, is it possible to wrongly divide it? Yes. And if you wrongly divide it, then you misrepresent God. Sometimes you better be quiet until you understand what you’re talking about. Sometimes you better learn. This is why pastors have a tremendous responsibility to shepherd their flock and teach their flock how to replicate the life of Christ, beginning with what they think. Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. It’s critical. There’s a lot more to say, much more than I have time to say. This is a 30-minute radio show, that’s all it is. But my prayer is that you’re listening. My prayer is that you will go from ordinary to extraordinary. My prayer is that you will let God prepare you in obscurity and make a biblical hero out of you that can change the course of history by replicating the life of Christ. When people see you, they must see Christ in you. That’s the light we’re talking about. That’s the preservative, the salt we’re talking about. I hope you’re listening.

SPEAKER 01 : 27:52

Thank you for listening to The Flatline with your host, Rick Hughes. 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.