God’s
Standards for a Nation
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 574 aired on August 28, 2016
Good morning and welcome to The FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick Hughes. For the next few
minutes I’d like you to stay with me. It will be about 30 minutes of motivation, inspiration,
education, and it’s all done without any type of manipulation. We’re not trying to sell you
anything. We’re not trying to hustle you. We’re just here to give you some divine viewpoint. My
job is to verify and identify the plan of God for your life. Your job if you decide to take it, is to
orient and adjust to the plan. As always on The FLOT Line, we are here to give you accurate
information, not some type of human speculation, information that will guide you and help you
to understand your life, what’s going on in your life, and maybe even help you understand your
nation and what’s going on in your nation. We live in the greatest nation in the world in my
opinion, the United States of America. In my opinion the greatness of this nation was established
because of the standards we follow that God laid out many years ago. I do think some of these
standards are being compromised and I do think the greatness of this nation is being threatened. I
think we must consider these things and realize who we are and what God expects out of us. I’d
like to start off by reading to you today. Normally on The FLOT Line we deal with the 10
problem-solving devices, rebound problem-solving device #1, the filling of the Holy Spirit
problem-solving device #2, the faith-rest drill, doctrinal orientation, grace orientation, a personal
sense of destiny, personal love for God, impersonal love for others, sharing the happiness of
God, and then occupation with Christ. I want to talk to you today about God’s standards for a
nation. Listen to Proverbs 1:25-33,
“Because you refused all of My counsel and you would have
none of My rebuke
[you refused it and you wouldn’t listen to Me],
then I will laugh at you when
your calamity comes; I will mock you when terror comes, when your terror comes like a storm
and your destruction comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you. Then
they will call upon Me but I will not answer.”
In other words, people will be asking God to
deliver them, not asking God to forgive them for their sin. This is not what they’re doing. They’re
asking God to deliver them from imminent danger.
“They will seek Me diligently
[in other words,
they are looking for a deliverer].
They won’t find Me because they hated knowledge and did not
choose the fear of the Lord. They would have none of My counsel, and they despised My every
rebuke. Therefore, they shall eat the fruit of their own ways and be filled to the full with their
own fancies. For the turning away of the simple will cause them to be slayed and the
complacency of a fool will destroy him. But whoever listens to Me will dwell safely and be secure
without fear of evil.”
Here is a divine rebuke to a nation such as America. I think we can draw an
application from this Old Testament passage. God doesn’t change, He’s immutable. He doesn’t
lie, He’s absolute veracity. This passage applies to us. When we don’t listen to His counsel and
we will have none of His rebuke, then we are setting ourselves up for disaster.
Romans 13:13
says,
“Let us walk properly as in the day,
not in revelry, not in drunkenness, not in lewdness, not
in lust, not in strife, not in envy.”
These seem to be personality traits of most people today that I
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run into and as seen on social media. As a matter fact, a lot of talk radio is built on strife and
envy. A lot of TV shows are built on lewdness and lust. It’s pitiful because this is what our
country has turned to for entertainment. A translation of Romans 13:13-14 from
God’s Word
Edition
says,
“We should live decently as people who live in the light of day. Wild parties,
drunkenness, sexual immorality, promiscuity, revelry, and jealousy cannot be part of our lives.
Instead,
live like the Lord Jesus Christ did and forget about satisfying the desires of your
sinful nature.
”
There is a mandate from Paul to us on how we should live. I’ve got to ask you
one question today on this radio show and this question is, have you compromised your core
values and adjusted to the culture of the day? Now, what are your core values? When I say this,
what do I mean by this? Well, when you grew up your parents taught you norms and standards.
They taught you norms for example to brush your teeth, comb your hair, make your bed, pick up
your mess, eat your food, clean the dishes, yada, yada, yada. Then the standards, this normally is
taught by a pastor in a church like the 10 Commandments and you learn Biblical standards. You
learn things that guide you. These norms and standards, once they are in your conscience, are
designed to protect you from yourself so that you don’t self-destruct. It’s the job of any parent to
instill the core values or the norms and standards that will carry their son or daughter through
life.
When we compromise the core values in our life and adjust to the culture of the day so
that we can be relevant or be accepted, then we in essence become a traitor to our own soul.
I’d like you to ask yourself these questions: Do you accept the standards of society and modern
culture today as being morally correct? Secondly, have you been convinced that sin is not sin and
that good is really evil? This seems to be the culture today that the Bible is evil and anything
about the Bible is evil, because it condemns certain sins as being destructive in a nation. There
are so many attacks upon the Bible today in schools, in the military even. I just read an article
where an Air Force officer was cited because he had an open Bible on his desk and someone
complained and said it was offensive to them. He got in trouble for this. It looks like we’re on
track for a major disaster. It doesn’t take a genius to figure this out unless you go put your head in
the sand like an ostrich does, so you won’t see it. Many of our citizens are divided and many of
our cities are crime-infested. Many of our churches have substituted ritual for reality. Many of
our highways are crowded with short-tempered drivers. Many of our marriages are failing. Lots
and lots of finances are in question and many, many children are hopeless and homeless in this
country today. If you take these things and add them up, you can see we’re on track for a major
disaster. Citizens divided, racial division, hatred among the races, unbelievable. We integrated
years ago and yet there’s still this racial hatred. Many of our cities are crime-infested. There are
places in my city that you best not go at night, you will be shot. You will be robbed. You will be
attacked and not only in my city but others I travel to such as Houston and Atlanta. There are
complete parts of these cities that police seldom even want to go into unless there are three or
four units at a time. It’s almost like a third world, crime-infested country. As far as churches
substituting ritual for reality, there seems to be less and less accurate Bible teaching and more
and more praise and worship and all sorts of stuff to entertain people and get them to come.
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Highways are crowded with short-tempered drivers. I do drive a lot and I have people almost run
over me on every trip. They’re in a hurry, “Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go.” If you ask them why,
they’ll say, “Well, I gotta get back.” They will run you off the road. The speed limit is 70. If
you’re driving 75 which is a little over the speed limit, they will get behind you, tailgate you,
blink their lights, blow their horn, and go around you 90 miles an hour. They hate you because
you are slowing them down. Short-tempered drivers, short-tempered people, I bet you have been
impacted by road rage and have seen things like this. Marriage is failing, falling apart. Many
people that we know can’t hold a marriage together and they have fallen apart. Finances in
question, well you know what this means. You know the dollar is not worth a dollar anymore.
When I went to school you could buy a gallon of gas for $0.27 a gallon, I know, it was a long
time ago. Now it’s $2.27 for a gallon of gas. I remember when I was in high school that the
fastest sports car out there was less than $10,000. Now you can’t even touch one for less than
$100,000. I remember when some of the nicest homes were only $30,000 and now you’ve got to
have $300,000 depending on where you are. One of my children rents a home in LA, involved in
a business out there, and it’s $3,000 a month. My goodness, finances are a disaster. The nation is
in trouble. We can’t keep going the way we’re going. Someone says, “I know, if we will elect
this person, this person will straighten everything out and this person will get everybody back on
the same page and we will all be in good shape.” Well, this is what the last president promised
and that didn’t happen. There’s too much crime, too much murder, too much animosity among the
races, and too much hope that some politician will deliver us from being torn apart internally.
There are those people who seek to do exactly this by the way, to tear America apart internally,
radically change America from the inside, and they do it by promoting hatred and violence. It’s a
moneymaking machine for them. God’s Word has answers to all of these things and here it is. In
order for this nation or any nation to function peacefully and to prosper and for the citizens to
mesh and not clash, for families to remain strong, and for the foundation of the future, then these
things must happen. Here’s a plan. If churches are going to reach out across the world, if we’re
going to be stable and strong, we need to get back to the divine institutions.
There are four
divine institutions. These were ordained by God in eternity past. They are God-designed
institutions that must be allowed to function if we hope to remain free and prosperous as
well as safe and secure
. I want to quote my pastor, a man who taught me so much, his name was
Robert B. Thieme Jr. and here’s what he said. “The most subtle attack on freedom originates in
either the rejection of establishment or rejection of authority in the royal family of God. Under
the laws of divine establishment, authority is defined as the legal power delegated by God
whereby certain members of the human race have jurisdiction and responsibility for others. Such
areas of authority include the four divine institutions. Those four divine institutions represent
authority. They are the concrete that holds this nation together. When we ignore the divine
institutions, we guarantee a crack in our foundation. These institutions are revealed in Scripture
and the Mosaic Law, and they allow for the human race to be perpetuated and eventually
preserved.” What’s the first one?
The first divine institution is the individual with free will or
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volition.
God gave you free will, the freedom to choose. He designed you to be free. You are
given a volition and this is your chooser.
Your volition has authority and it can make good
decisions or it can make bad decisions. Good decisions hopefully from a position of
strength, this is from what God’s Word says.
Bad decisions from a position of weakness, this
is what someone else may say. Divine viewpoint thinking versus human viewpoint. The danger
to your volition is the arrogance of ignorance. Did you hear this? It corrupts everything it comes
in contact with.
The combination of the arrogance of ignorance with the arrogance of power
will destroy human freedom and claim that the greater good justifies the means to the ends.
This is what happens when people that are arrogant and ignorant of the divine institutions have a
lust for power. They want to be in power so they can fix things and they can claim the greater
good justifies the ends, so no telling what could happen. I call this artificial intelligence. You’ve
seen movies about computers being artificially intelligent. Well to me, AI, artificial intelligence,
is nothing more than arrogance and ignorance. People don’t want to know God’s Word, they’re
not interested in knowing God’s Word. They’ve got a better deal. They’ve got a better plan and
they buy into Satan’s lie, hook, line, and sinker, because Satan uses strong delusion. He will
disable the thinking of many people. If he can get you to operate on your emotions and not think,
then he’s got you because one of his ploys is to appeal to your emotions. Under arrogance, your
very own volition will make a decision motivated by your emotions that will destroy any
capacity you might have for happiness and true values that you might have in your life.
Arrogance is your number one enemy because it’s nothing more than self-justification, self-
deception, and self-absorption. If you bow to arrogance, if you justify why you’re right and God
is wrong, if you justify why you don’t have to do certain things, if you justify why it’s okay to get
into violence and try to overthrow the government, you are arrogantly deceived. Satan is using
strong delusion to appeal to the emotions of many. The choices that you make will determine the
life that you live. Remember this, everybody in this nation from politicians to preachers,
everybody has a sin nature. Nobody can legislate perfect justice and fairness for all people.
The
only person who has perfect justice and perfect fairness is God Himself since all of His
justice is based on divine standards.
As a matter fact, we are told in Matthew 7:1 not to judge
one another. God does not look favorably on gossip and slander and maligning other people since
He’s the only one that has all the facts. If you refuse to take responsibility for your decisions and
you base this lack of responsibility on the arrogance of ignorance, then you become part of the
problem, not part of the solution. How exactly can you use your volition to not only better
yourself but to make your nation a better place? Well, I can tell you. 1. Believe in the Lord Jesus
Christ, accept Him as your Savior. Nobody can do this for you. Don’t put it off and say, “Well, I’ll
do it later because if I become a Christian, I can never have any more fun times.” This is a lie.
This is Satan’s deception. I did not become a Christian until I was 22 and I never had as much
fun as I have now that I’m a Christian. Being a believer in Jesus Christ and being free of guilt
and shame is an amazing thing. Nobody can do this for you except Christ and this is why it says,
“If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away and all things become
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new”
(2 Corinthians 5:17). You can become a new person today by simply bowing your head and
saying, “Father, I believe in Jesus Christ and want to receive Him as my Savior,” and boom, you
enter into the family of God. You are a new person. 2. Do you want to help your nation and
yourself?
“Grow in the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ”
(2 Peter
3:18). Why does it say this? It’s so that you can replace blind arrogance and you can then begin
to see things with divine viewpoint, seeing yourself as you really are, not what you think you are.
3. Support divine establishment principles like we are talking about now. 4. Don’t try to clean up
the devil’s world. This is not the thing to do to better yourself and your nation. You’re not going
to clean up the devil’s world. The devil doesn’t want you cleaning up his world. When you get it
in your head that you need to go down and march against the liquor store, go down and march
against the adult bookstore, march against this and that, you’re just trying to clean up the devil’s
world. It won’t work. People have sin natures and people are no good. You’ve got to remember
this, you’re no good. If it wasn’t for the grace of God you probably, and me for sure, would
already be a greasy spot. Here’s the last thought.
5. Have you surrendered your freedom for
security?
Which is more important to you, to be free or to be secure? The government offers you
false security but in order to enjoy it you’ve got to give up your freedom. Your volition is critical.
As goes your volition, so goes your life. You can reject these things, you can put them aside, you
can say you got a better deal, but in the end it’s just like the verses that I read to you from the
beginning,
“You refused My counsel,
and you would have none of my rebuke,
so don’t come
looking for me when disaster hits.”
The second divine institution is marriage.
In the garden
God instituted the first marriage. He took a rib of Adam and created a perfect helpmate named
Eve. In Genesis 2:21-23,
“The Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept
and He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in its place. The rib which the Lord God had
taken from man, He made into a woman and He brought her to the man and Adam said, ‘This is
now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called ‘woman’ because she was taken
from me.’”
God provided a helpmate for Adam. In essence, Jesus Christ Himself performed the
first marriage in the Garden of Eden when He brought that woman to that man.
By creating this
marriage of one man and one woman He instituted what we know as monogamy.
He didn’t
create three or four or five women. He created one woman. Marriage is the most basic and
fundamental organization in the human race. Even an unbeliever who rejects the gospel can find
happiness in marriage, but a lot of times marriages fail and the reason is because people fail. The
institution of marriage is essential for order and function in a human nation but people are going
to fail. More mistakes are made here than in any other area due to emotions because marriage
demands being rational, not irrational. Before you get married, you’ve got to go through the
attraction stage, the compatibility stage, and the rapport stage. If you marry in the attraction
stage, most times it won’t work because love is motivation to communicate. It’s a lifelong
conversation that never runs out. It takes more energy for you to communicate than copulate
someone said once. Poems and one-liners are not the problem-solving devices in marriage. If
you’re a believer in Jesus Christ, I assure you marriage is the most difficult, the most challenging,
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and the place of more failures than anything else in life because marriage is not about you
finding the right person. Marriage is about you being the right person. I can tell you, marriage
rejects communal living. It rejects promiscuousness and provides a stable environment for
children. Satanic attempts to hijack marriage go on every day. Here’s a question. Is it okay to live
together or not? The answer is no. Is it okay in your mind to have premarital sex? The answer is
no. Yes, it’s going on all over America today because the culture has changed. Since we are a
client nation to God, it’s no wonder Satan wants to minimize our national impact. It’s no wonder
he wants to demonize America to the rest of the world because after all, we are the ones who
spread God’s Word through evangelism and through missionary activity. You better believe he
opposes this.
The third divine institution is the family. It’s God’s institution for the raising
of children and establishment of orientation to authority.
Some families have children by
natural means and others adopt them but either way, it’s the training ground for the rest of life.
Therefore, in Ephesians 6:1-3,
“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor
your father and your mother, which is the first mandate with a promise, that it will be well with
you and you may live a long time on this earth.”
Longevity is related to authority orientation to
your parents. If you don’t orient to the authority of your parents, you will be disoriented in life.
You will not orient to the authority of the police officer, the principal of the school or the coach.
You will be anti-authority and that’s your arrogance.
Divine institution number four is
nationalism. It’s the authority of the government over the citizens of the state, the rule of
law.
Believe it or not, God ordained nationalism in the human race to protect it from self-
destruction. Internationalism reached its peak of degeneracy under one language, one race, at the
Tower of Babel. In Genesis 11:1-19, you should read it.
“Now the whole earth had one language
and one speech. So they said, ‘Let’s build ourselves a city, and let’s make a tower whose top is in
the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves lest we be scattered abroad over the face of
the whole earth.’”
What did God do?
“He scattered them abroad over the face of the whole
earth, and they ceased building their city. The Lord confused the languages of all the earth and
scattered them abroad.”
Do you want to know how the Indians came to be, and the Chinese, the
Japanese, Americans, God did it.
The Bible says if the world was under one rule, it would
self-destruct.
This is what Satan wants. He wants to control the world with one man, one person
called the antichrist. God set up exterior protection called the military and interior protection
called law enforcement. God set up an economy based on free enterprise in the Bible. And that
nation has freedom to evangelize and send out missionaries to the rest of the world. These are the
four divine institutions. The further we get away from these in our nation, the closer we get to
destruction. Will we change? It doesn’t depend on what politician you elect.
The survival of our
nation depends on who you are and what your attitude toward God’s Word is.
I hope you’re
listening. I hope you’re paying attention. This is very critical for the future of your children and
your grandchildren because as goes their spiritual life, so goes their nation. Tune in next week,
same time, same place. Until then, I’m your host Rick Hughes saying thank you for listening to
The FLOT Line.