Join host Rick Hughes for an enlightening discussion on the powerful role of a Jeshurun believer. This episode of The Flatline dives deep into the stories of biblical figures like Philip the Evangelist and the Apostle Paul, showcasing their profound impact as divine influencers in history. Discover the extraordinary power of the gospel and how it can change lives and destinies forever. Rick examines the call for Christians today to embrace their role as change-makers in their communities, drawing on the principles outlined in scripture.
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, please stick with me. Short time of motivation, some inspiration, a whole lot of education with absolutely no manipulation. That means no solicitations. Nobody’s asking you for money. Nobody’s trying to recruit you to join anything. We simply want to give you some biblical information that will help you verify and identify God’s plan for your life. If you’re interested, you can orient and adjust to the plan. That’s up to you. But my job is to get it accurate, to give you some good information, and to point you in the right direction. The Flatline is always designed to remind you of great biblical truths, 10 unique problem-solving devices, that will introduce you to a new way of studying, a new way of learning the Word of God. That’s what this show is about. The best news I can tell you is that Jesus Christ, the anointed Son of God, has redeemed you and me out of the slave market of sin. So our debt to God has been paid and we are now free from the penalty of sin and the power of sin, the penalty of death and the power of sin. So when I received the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior, or when you did as well, we in effect accepted the offering that Christ made on our behalf. Free, free, free gift from the compliments of God. Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, for by grace you are saved through faith. And that not of yourselves is a gift of God and not of works, lest any man should brag about it. But we’re still here. We’ve accepted Christ. We didn’t evaporate and go to heaven immediately. We’re still here. The objective is to influence the world for the Lord Jesus Christ, to be influencers. And we’ve already had three Sundays where we’ve studied what it means to be an influencer. Today we want to continue on and review just a little bit about how you can be an influencer in your life, in your time, in your nation. Because if there’s anything that we need, we need believers that can have a strong Christian influence. in their family, and in their nation. We talked a little bit about Philip when we left off last week, Philip the Evangelist, not Philip the Apostle. They’re two different people. Philip the Apostle was called in John 1.45, but Philip the Evangelist is sent out to preach. He’s one of the seven in Acts 6.5, and this is Philip the Evangelist. And we want to see how he had an influence and how his influence was effective. And you can apply this to your life as well in Acts 8, 4 through 8. Therefore, they were scattered abroad and went everywhere preaching the word. That’s those seven and the powers in the message, not in the man or in the style that he did it. Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached Christ unto them, that’s his death, his burial, and his resurrection. And the people with one accord gave heed to those things which Philip spoke, which they heard Philip say. And then he identified himself by doing miracles with them as well. And there was great joy in the city, and in Acts 8, 14, the apostles heard about what was going on in Jerusalem, so they sent over Peter and John. And so Philip was, once he had gotten the revival started, he was relieved of his duty, and He said, okay, we got it from now. We’ll come in here, and we’ll teach the Word of God. They came down, and Peter and John came down, prayed with the people that Philip had led to Christ, and they received the Holy Spirit. And then Philip had a new assignment. He went sent to the desert. Sometimes you may feel like you’re living in the desert, that you’re all alone where you are, that you really have no close friends, that You have no one that you hang out with, no one that you buddy up with. That’s not a bad thing. Being alone is a good thing sometimes. So here, God the Father sends Philip to the desert. Angel of the Lord in Acts 8.26 spoke to Philip. and said, It’s time for you to check out, arise, and go forth down to the desert, and out of the Gaza Strip. And he got up, 27, Acts 8, and he went down there, and there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all of her treasure. And he had come to Jerusalem to worship. He was apparently a God-fearing Gentile man, maybe even a full-fledged proselyte. I don’t really know. But the Holy Spirit told Philip to go up and join him in his chariot. So he ran up beside him, and maybe the chariot wasn’t going very fast. And he could hear this man reading out of the book of Isaiah, Isaiah 53, 7 through 9. And he said, Do you understand what you’re reading? This is something I want to remind you of. In the book of Jeremiah, God said, I’m looking for people that not only know me, but people that understand me. And this has been one of the things that I’ve harped about on my radio show here. There are many people that I meet who in fact know God the Father through Jesus Christ. They were saved, they have a real salvation, but they don’t really understand the God they know because they got into ritual and there was no reality to it. They never really had any spiritual growth. And so this man’s reading, trying to figure out what’s going on. It says positive volition in the middle of the desert. I don’t care where positive volition is. If somebody’s positive, God the Father will get the gospel to him. So the eunuch said, who’s the prophet talking about? And Philip opened his mouth in verse 35 and began from the scripture, preached Jesus Christ to him. Here’s the principle again. Wherever there’s any positive volition at the sign of God consciousness, then the gospel is provided. And for me, I became God conscious about 11 years old, but I didn’t hear the gospel until I was 22. And at that time is when I made a decision to believe in Christ. So you’ll go through two phases in your life. You must be positive in God consciousness, because if you reject God in God consciousness and you say, well, I don’t believe God is God, I think that rock over there is my God, or the tree is my God, or the sun is my God, then you may never hear the gospel. But if you reject those things and say, I want to know the true God, then God the Father will make sure you hear the gospel. so god consciousness is defined as the status of any normal human being who becomes aware of the existence of god through the function of his own thoughts his own mentality and you know god made his existence plain to every human being in this universe so when a member of the human race reaches god consciousness you or me whatever age it could be this is often called the point of accountability So let’s go back and look at this now. How could you, if you were in the middle of the desert, if you’re alone in a small city out west or alone in a big city in the Midwest or alone in a big city in the east, how can you influence someone in the middle of your desert where you live? Well, remember, the gospel is alive and powerful, and when it’s given, it can change men’s hearts and lives and even the course of history. But it must be heard, and it’s got to be believed, and then it produces the new man in Christ. And if there’s anything that aka the devil does, it is to pervert or prevent the gospel from being given. because you have the most powerful thing in the world at your fingertips. It’s the power of God and it’s in the gospel. In Romans 1.16, Paul said, I’m not ashamed of the gospel of God because it is the power of God unto salvation. Those words, the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ can change a man’s life and a man’s destiny forever. So whenever you explain to him the sacrificial death of Christ, how he redeemed us out of the slave market of sin, how he reconciled us to God, how he paid the penalty for our sin, if that man believes it and if that man receives Christ as his Savior, he has eternal life. That’s powerful. He couldn’t buy it on his own. He couldn’t earn it on his own. He couldn’t purchase it on his own. It’s a free gift just for believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. Titus 3, 5, not by works of righteousness, which we’ve done, 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. That being justified by means of his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. It’s free. There it is. That’s the power of the gospel. A life can be changed forever from the power of the words that you give them as a divine influencer. I mean, you have more power than the atomic bomb, I promise you. So, now let’s look at it this way. We can develop military weapons that’ll kill the enemy, but we cannot save people. Only God can do that, and we have the weapon that does it. It’s called the gospel. And when we believe it, we become one with the Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Thessalonians 2.14, it was for this that he called you by our gospel to the obtaining of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. So Philip’s job as an influencer, give the gospel. Your job as an influencer, give the gospel. God removed Philip from Samaria. His job was done there. On to the next assignment. And I ask you, have you ever requested an assignment from God? Have you ever done that, that he would give you an opportunity to be his representative somewhere like this? What was God’s assignment for you last week? Did you pass it up? Were you an influencer in your own periphery last week? Isaiah 6, 8, here am I, send me, Lord, Isaiah said, and that’s what God’s looking for, those of you that are willing to be influencers. So after Philip’s assignment in Gaza, you don’t hear much more about him until Acts 21. There, Paul encounters Philip again in a town called Caesarea, where Philip had now married and had four daughters, all those daughters were prophetesses. Luke records it this way, Acts 21, 8. And the next day, we that were of Paul’s company departed and came to Caesarea, and we entered into the house of Philip the evangelist. which was one of the seven, and we stayed with him. The same man had four daughters, all virgins, which did prophesy. So Philip had a tremendous ministry of influencing. Now let’s talk about another divine influencer in the Bible, Paul, the Apostle Paul. Paul influenced two people that had a tremendous ministry in their life named Aquila and Priscilla. In Acts 18.1, in Corinth, Paul met a Jew whose name was Aquila. and along with his wife priscilla and they were already believers and they had fled rome under persecution from claudius the emperor who had commanded that all jews leave rome and they were tent makers like paul and they were all camped together paul worked during this week and preached in the synagogue on the sabbath so that’s what he did he he was bivocational as people like to say so it’s here that paul let his emotions get the best of him one day he’s going in the synagogue preaching and they kept rejecting it and so in acts 18 6 when they resisted the gospel and blasphemed he shook out his garments and said to them your blood be on your own head i’m clean from now on i will go to the gentiles In Acts 18, 7, the next verse, Paul set up Bible class next door to the synagogue in the home of justice. Now, there you go. He got kicked out of one place, and he started teaching in another place right next door. And so he sets up his Bible class in the home of justice, and it was there that Crispus, the leader of the synagogue, himself got saved. And they had that effect of many in Corinth believing in Christ. The Lord assured Paul that he would be safe there, and he stayed there 18 months teaching God’s word. But eventually he had to leave from Corinth and go to Ephesus along with Aquila and Priscilla, and from there on down to Caesarea and eventually to Antioch. It looks to me like reading the Bible that Paul left Aquila and Priscilla and Ephesus because that’s where they ran into Apollos, and that’s who they influenced. Apollos was a convert of John the Baptist who was learned in Old Testament prophecy, but he was unacquainted with the finished work of Christ on the cross. So his message of baptism was based on John’s message of repentance and prepare for the coming of the Messiah. Now listen, God designed divine appointment for Paul and Aquila and Priscilla for a specific reason. He enlightened them on the mystery doctrines of the church and they were faithful friends and they were followers for quite some time. But here I want you to understand that God will bring in and out of your life specific people for specific times for a specific reason. Sometimes it’s because they need mechanics of spirituality. They may be believers, but they don’t understand the mechanics of spirituality. They don’t understand the filling of the Holy Spirit. They don’t understand the growing grace dynamics of doctrine in the soul converted from gnosis to epinosis. They have no concept of the protocol plan of God or learning those 10 problem-solving devices. And God brings them into your life for you to influence them. Not to browbeat them, but to influence them. They need mechanics and the concepts of right and wrong within the church. Remember what I’ve told you. A right thing done in a wrong way is still wrong. A right thing done in a right way is right. For example, taking communion is a right thing, but there’s a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it, and Paul warns about it in the book of 1 Corinthians. If you take communion out of fellowship with unconfessed sin in your life, you’re going to get disciplined, Paul says. Now, I want to move on to another agent of change. This is a word you’ve never heard before, and I want to tell you about it and teach you about it. is called a Jeshurun believer, a Jeshurun believer, J-E-S-H-U-R-U-N, Jeshurun, J-E-S-H-U-R-U-N. Moses himself was the founder of this phenomenal fraternity. I would say the most dynamic fraternity in all of human history and that fraternity is still operating today. And it has the most dynamic and visible impact in history. Jeshurun is the name of that fraternity. It’s made up of mature believers that think Bible doctrine is more important than anything else in their life. That’s the first question I have to ask you. Is the word of God more important to you than your family? Is the word of God more important to you than your politics? If it is the number one most important thing in your life and if you’re serious about growing in grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, then you can join this fraternity as a mature believer. The name of the organization is the Hebrew noun. It’s used four times in the Old Testament, deshudron. Moses coined the word and took it from the verb yashar, which meant to go straight to an objective or to be upright or to be blameless, to be righteous, in a good sense, to have integrity. So that noun emphasizes believers who have a spiritual life compatible with the righteousness of God. Remember, we get the righteousness of God at salvation, plus our given to us at salvation. And that’s positional truth. But experientially, we have to gain the righteousness of God as we grow and mature and become mature believers. So we enter that fraternity becoming a mature believer, an upright one. The noun Jeshurun means righteous ones and the upright ones. It’s found in Deuteronomy 32, 15. It’s found in Deuteronomy 33, 5, 33, 26, and Isaiah 44, 2. So Jeshurun can function in a client nation, like America, even if the pivot is destroyed. The pivot is that core group of mature believers like Gideon had, those 300 faithful ones that delivered Israel from the Midianites. And I’ve always talked to you about being in the pivot, but this is one step above the pivot. This is the Jeshurun believer. the man or the woman who can function alone. And this decoration is the highest decoration of promotion in all of human history. And I have no doubt, if you’re not, some of you listening to me right now, you may already be a Jeshurun believer, or if not, you may be on your way. The prosperity that often comes to a client nation like America, through the grace of God, can easily distract to the point where there’s a rejection of the spiritual life. That’s part of what’s happened in this nation. And therefore, the forsaking of God by believers and the scorning of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s why so many believers in America have no idea what the spiritual life is all about and could even care less. They got their eyes on the gift and forgot who the giver is. But this Jeshurun believer I’m talking about It’s unbelievable. Jeshurun is less than a pivot of mature believers. It may be just a few, one or two or three mature believers in history, and it is their impact that delivers the nation. Because of the apostasy and the degeneracy in this nation, we probably should have already gone out under the fifth cycle of discipline, but we’re still here. We may be on our way out, who knows, but there have been some Jeshurun-type believers One of them was my pastor who’s now gone to be with the Lord. For 53 years, he taught God’s word faithfully from his pulpit. And that’s where I learned so much. Yes, God’s looking for mature believers. And it means that by which Jesus Christ controls history, you, he’s counting on you to keep this client nation going, even if the pivot doesn’t exist. You can be a member of that select fraternity of mature believers, and the Lord Jesus Christ will deliver this nation because of you. In Ephesians 3.19, it talks about the Jeshurun believer. Having the fullness of God, the fullness of God being brought to completion is the Jeshurun nomenclature for the church age. Listen to Ephesians 3.19, and to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge that you might be filled with the fullness of God. Did you hear that? To know the love of Christ which passes knowledge that you might be filled with the fullness of God. the love of Christ, that’s one of our problem-solving devices, personal love for God, and then which passes knowledge, that’s gnosis to epinosis. Gnosis knowledge is knowledge you heard and understand. Gnosis knowledge is knowledge you heard, understood, and applied. And when you learn it and apply it and have virtue love, personal love for God, then you become filled with the fullness of God. Fullness of God is the word pleroma, the pleroma theos. And this verse is indicating to you and me that there’s much, much more to the spiritual life than just simply the filling of the Holy Spirit. There’s much more and it requires the filling of the Holy Spirit. Yes, it does. That’s rebound, problem-solving device number one, and the filling of the Holy Spirit, problem-solving device number two. But there’s something else beyond knowledge. Ephesians 4, 13, the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the statue of Jesus Christ. That’s what God wants you to do, grow to the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man. And the word knowledge here is the word epinosis. It’s beyond gnosis. And this is what allows us to assume the mind of Christ and to take on the mind of Christ and to have the function of the spiritual life as Christ thinks, Philippians 2, 5. A Jeshurun believer has his thinking transformed and changed. He’s changed the way he thinks. Now he’s beginning to think in a different way. And he’s not thinking in terms of arrogance beyond what he should think, but he’s thinking in terms of humility. This is what you have to do. Ephesians 3.19 talks about the love of Christ again and that you know the love of Christ. And that’s huperbalo, the Greek word huperbalo, balo to throw and huper over, extend. And basically, if I corrected the translation in some simple way, it would say, for you to know the love of Christ which transcends the bounds of knowledge, goes beyond knowledge. In order that, and with the result that, you will be filled with the plenitude of God, the full knowledge of God. This includes the strengthening of the Holy Spirit in the inner man. That has to take place first, Ephesians 3.16. That he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with power through the Spirit in the inner man, Ephesians 3.16. So the Holy Spirit is the reserved power for the believer. But unfortunately, most Christians don’t even understand the filling of the Holy Spirit, much less the available power that he offers so that we can overcome the flesh. Yes, Ephesians 5, 16 says, walk in the flesh and you will not fulfill. If you walk in the spirit, excuse me, if you walk in the spirit, you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. There’s how you overcome the flesh. So Ephesians 3, 17 goes on to say, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, and that you being rooted and grounded in love, that’s occupation with Christ, that Christ may dwell in your heart by faith, that’s salvation plus the filling of the Holy Spirit, rooted and grounded in love, that’s the road to spiritual maturity, requires you understanding virtue love, problem-solving device number six and number seven, understand that, come to understand personal love for God, impersonal love for others, so that you can fully grasp the extent of God’s plan. To fully grasp the love of Christ, which is beyond mere knowledge, with the result that you become filled with the fullness of God. So the gate to pleroma status, or Jeshurun status, is epinosis. Learning God’s word, applying God’s word, consistently taking in God’s word. Fullness is beyond scientific understanding, since it’s based on faith. not empirical data. The fullness of God must be based on faith, not empirical data. Faith in the supersensible realities is the highest exercise of reason, says Augustus H. Strong, Systematic Theology. Faith in the supersensitive realities is the highest exercise of reason. He said faith is the cognitive act of reason which may be defined as certitude with respect to matters in which verification is unattainable. So we don’t believe in Christ and live the Christian life based on rationalism or empiricism. We live it based on pisticism, which is faith. The word pistis is faith. So we understand this as wisdom in the heart. That faith is wisdom in the heart. And when you have wisdom in the heart, which comes from converting gnosis to epinosis, then you have insight and discernment in all matters, both spiritually and physically. That’s the mindset of the Jeshurun believer. In Jeshurun status, the fear of living and dying is removed by the execution of the spiritual life. So there’s really no safer or happier place to be than in Jeshurun status as a mature believer, regardless of the historical circumstances that we live in. So if you want to be a Jeshurun believer, if you want to be that sort of person, it requires you to stay filled with the Holy Spirit. It requires you to consistently advance in the plan of God, to operate under the protocol plan of God, for you to sit under a well-qualified pastor and learn God’s word and apply it into your life. And then you can influence personally and historically and internationally, even in the angelic realm. That’s your testimony. That’s what God’s expecting out of you, to be an influencer personally, historically, even internationally. And that is the sure-run believer. That’s who God’s looking for. So it’s obvious this country is not going to survive if we continue to split down the middle with political and racial strife. Add to that the loss of divine establishment principles and losing the rule of law, we see that we’ve prospered under for so many years, now you can see what’s coming. You can see what’s coming through looking at the trends of history. Yes, we’ve done away with the rule of law. We’ve put down the divine establishments. We’ve quit proclaiming the gospel. You and I can’t lose sight of our mission. In these changing times, we must be agents of change by means of the invisible and historical impact of the Jeshurun believer. You do that, and you’re going to get the crown of life from Revelation 2.10. It’ll be given to you for your consistent fidelity and faith in living the Christian life. That decoration of the crown of life is awarded to invisible heroes for maximum production of divine good through the execution of the protocol plan of God. That is a Jeshurun believer. That’s why I’m appealing to you today to be the Jeshurun-type believer that delivers this nation, the influencer that we need in America. Are you willing to get serious about this? Are you willing to grow in the grace and knowledge of your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, above and beyond anything else in your life? If so, you’re the person I’m looking for. I hope this is making sense, and I hope you’ll come back next week. Until then, this is Rick Hughes, your host, 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.
