Dive into a powerful discussion on humility, forgiveness, and occupation with Christ. Rick Hughes unpacks the essential lessons from Jesus’ foot washing of the disciples, stressing the importance of forgiving one another and living a life of service. This transformative episode provides both perspective and practical steps for cultivating a life of peace and tranquility through God’s grace and provision.
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, heard every Sunday morning here on this same radio station. All across America, 56 radio stations this morning are playing this show. You’re in one of those areas, and thank you for listening. Our whole objective is not to solicit anything from you, not to manipulate you in any way, but just to give you some accurate information. Hopefully that will help you verify and identify the plan of God for your life. And if you can do that, hopefully you’ll orient and adjust to the plan. Because it all starts with the greatest news that Jesus Christ is the anointed son of God and he’s redeemed us out of the slave market of sin. Thus our debt to God has been paid. We are reconciled to God. We are now free from the penalty of death. and free from the power of sin. That’s why the Bible says, not by works of righteousness, which we’ve done in Titus 3, 5, 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, so that being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the confidence or hope of eternal life. So we know we have eternal life in Christ. We know he said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man can come to the Father but by me. By the way, before we get into our subject today, which is called These Things, which we will finish that, we’ve done three shows on these things found in John 15, 11, and it’s an amazing study. But before we finish this up and wrap it up today, I want to let you know that all of these shows are podcasted. We do have a tremendous amount of podcast listeners. Well over 50,000 shows have been listened to on the podcast venues. And you can find The Flotline on Spotify. You can find The Flotline on Apple iPod. You can find us on Breaker or Anchor. These are all podcast venues. And so if you’d like to hear any of these shows or any of the other shows, just go to the podcast, The Flotline. Search for us on your podcast venue. You’ll find it. And by the way, all of our shows are transcribed for you. If you need any additional information from this year or last year, we have it all transcribed thanks to the grace of God who’s made it possible. And so it’s all free. The transcriptions are free. The shows are free. And we believe that God’s in it. God will pay for it. And he certainly has done that so far. So thank you for giving me a few minutes of your time. Thank you for listening. And now let’s dive into our passage that we’re studying, John 15, 11. And here’s where we were. This is where it started. The Lord Jesus Christ told those disciples after the Last Supper, these things have I spoken unto you so that my joy might remain in you and that your joy might be full. What a wonderful promise. The joy of the Lord Jesus Christ, we call it problem-solving device number nine, sharing the happiness of God. The joy of the Lord Jesus Christ might remain in you. Might is a subjunctive verb. Might remain is a subjunctive, active, active, subjunctive. Now, why do I tell you that? Because it’s potential. Subjunctive is potential. Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. It depends on if you do what I tell you to do. These things I’ve spoken to you so that my joy might remain in you. And that has to do with their attitude in time of testing and adversity and trouble. That’s why we talk about that on the flat line. Adversity is inevitable. Stress is optional. They were going to face tremendous adversity once the Lord Jesus Christ left them through his death, burial, and resurrection. And they’re going to have to go it alone other than the fact that he promised he would send them a mentor, a tutor, a comforter called the Holy Spirit. And so he said, if you do the things I’m telling you, then your joy will be full. The word for full is pleroo. It means to be filled up, and it’s an aorist passive subjunctive verb. The passive voice says the subject receives the action from the verb, which is the Holy Spirit. He’ll give you the joy. And the subjunctive mood is potential, so it depends on their volition. If they will be obedient, and if they will do what the Lord tells them to do in these next few verses, then then their joy, their human happiness can be complete. So the Lord Jesus Christ is basically teaching them how to be happy after that last supper. And that last supper started with John chapter 13. In John chapter 13, we find where, and in reviewing this for you a little bit, please, we find where in John 13, one through 17, he did foot washing with them. And he taught them all about rebound and how it’s necessary for us to confess our sins when we get our feet dirty. He was not teaching them to wash one another’s feet. That was not what was going on. It was an illustration. And he said, if I, your Lord and Master, washed your feet, then you should wash one another’s feet. In other words, if I can forgive you for your sin, then you need to forgive one another for the sins that may be committed against you. And Judas was there. He was going to commit the terrible sin of betrayal and become a traitor and sell the Lord Jesus Christ out. And the Lord Jesus Christ knew that. So in John 13, he’s trying to teach them to learn to be forgiving of their sins. brothers in christ when they mess up that’s a hard lesson to learn very hard lesson to learn because we don’t want to forgive people who do us over you know he told them they’re not going to understand what he’s doing now john 13 7 what i’m doing you won’t know it right now but you’ll know it hereafter and that’s when apostle peter balked a little bit and said you’re not going to wash my feet and the Lord had to explain to him the difference between luo and nipto, the two Greek words. Jesus said in John 13 10, he that is washed, luo, needeth not except to wash his feet. Luo means absolution and salvation. And wash the feet is niptoe, and that’s cleansed from sin. So Peter didn’t need to be saved again, he needed to have his feet washed or cleansed. So that’s our need to be cleansed from sin on a daily basis, moment by moment, and we do that by 1 John 1, 9. If we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us, and that’s called the rebound technique. When we get out of fellowship with God, we rebound, we confess our sin, and we get back in fellowship with God. That’s the basis for the filling of the Holy Spirit. And so we saw some principles to be learned. Sometimes people you trust the most are gonna let you down. You have to learn to forgive them just like the Lord forgives us, Ephesians 4.32. Be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God for Christ’s sake forgave you. And then we saw there’s a difference between being cleansed and being saved. That’s the difference between the positional truth and experiential truth. In position, you may be in the family of God. That’s your position. But in experience, you may not be in fellowship with God because you have unconfessed sin in your life and you’ve quenched and grieved the Holy Spirit. So you have to learn how to recover from that, and that’s to get your feet washed by the Lord when you go and confess your sin. So we have to learn not to be bitter when we’re betrayed by those that we trust. And that’s where Hebrews said, don’t let any root of bitterness spring up and trouble you. And then he said in John 13, 14, if I, your Lord and master, have washed your feet, you ought also to wash one another’s feet. And this is not, never was practiced after this. There are a few churches that still practice this ritual, but it’s not what he was teaching. He was teaching how to forgive one another for sin. And then he said, you will be happy if you know these things. And he didn’t use the word kara here, which is the word for joy. He used the word makairios, which is the word for happiness. The happiness that he’s speaking of here is the central essence of the Christian life. You and I know it as problem-solving device number nine, sharing the happiness of God. It’s a life that has, listen carefully, objective optimism. Objective optimism. That’s a relaxed mental attitude produced by inner joy and confidence that comes from the Word of God. So, if you store the Word of God in your soul, you’ll never have more joy than when you’re in the plan of God for your life. If you understand your mission as an influencer for the Lord Jesus Christ in this devil’s world, it’ll be a lot of happiness for you, and this was a mandate to establish this concept not to teach foot washing to the thick-headed disciples, but he did it because they’re kind of thick-headed and they had to learn the hard way. So their future happiness was linked to obedience of the principles that he taught them. These things are part of John 15, 11. John 13 is part of that. So he also identified a traitor that was in the midst of them in John 13, 21 as part of these things after the Last Supper. He identified, didn’t tell them by name, but he said, I’m going to dip some bread in the wine and the one I give it to is the traitor. Of course, they didn’t pay any attention to that. They were too busy being full and talking and they didn’t really pay attention and they missed it. And then the new covenant he gave them in John 13, 34 about having impersonal love one for another. And then poor Peter had to be humbled in John 13, 36. He taught him, before the rooster crows in the morning, you’re going to deny me three times. And this is a key to living the Christian life is humility. We can’t live the Christian life unless we have some humility in our life. And that’s why the Bible says in Philippians 2, 5, Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. He humbled himself and made himself of no reputation, took upon himself the form of a servant. So this is exactly what we have to do. We have to have some humility. Humility is orientation to authority. It’s the absolute absence of arrogance in your life. Humility doesn’t mean you’re a weak wimp. That’s not what it is. You can be an NFL football player, smash-mouth football player, and still have humility because it’s what you think, not what you do. It’s not walking around all sad-shouldered. It’s stand up, be proud, but have orientation to authority and be obedient to the Father. So he had to teach Peter, had to learn this because Peter was pretty thick-headed and pretty arrogant. And then came occupation with Christ, John 14, 1. Let not your hearts be troubled if you believe in God. Believe also in me. They had to learn this. They had to learn that there’s a difference between believing in God and believing in Christ. In James 2.19, the demons believe and tremble, but they’re not saved. And a lot of people say, well, I believe in God, and I hope I’m going to heaven, but that’s not how you get to heaven. Belief in God is not eternal life. Belief in the Lord Jesus Christ is eternal life. That’s why Paul said, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, Acts 16, 31. That’s why Jesus said, I only, I put that in for emphasis, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man can come to the Father but by me. You can’t go to the Father on your own. Why? Because you don’t have enough righteousness to compare with the righteousness of Christ. That’s why the Bible says there are none that are righteous, not even one. All of our righteousnesses are like a filthy rag in God’s eyes. So you can’t impress God with your do-good stuff. The only thing that impresses God is what happened on that cross where the Bible says, he that knew no sin was made sin for us so that we could be made the righteousness of God by means of him. That’s how we have eternal life. That’s how we get there. So occupation with Christ is critical. Then the Lord taught him under these things, eternal security, In John 14, 11, he explained to them, John 14, 7, excuse me, he explained to them eternal security, that they’re not going to be lost and that they can have eternal life forever. So this was a wonderful thing that they had to begin to trust the Lord Jesus Christ with that. He said, and then another one of these things that he went through with them, and all of this is after dinner, by the way. The gospel truth, John 14, 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. The fact that he was hypostatic union, he was God and man in one body forever. They had to learn that, that he was God and he was man in one body. He’s the only body in heaven right now, by the way. The only physical body in heaven is our Lord Jesus Christ in a resurrection body. But we will join him in our resurrection body. eventually when the exit resurrection takes place. He also taught them about Christian service. He said in John 14, 12, I’m telling you, if you believe on me, the works that I do, you will do greater works than this. And he explained how they will go on to change the world. And I told you there’s no greater joy than leading one person to Christ. And I challenged you to do that. To ask your friends if they died today, would they go to heaven? And if they don’t, no, then you can give them the good news that Christ paid for their sin. He redeemed them out of the slave market of sin. He reconciled you to God. And through faith alone and Christ alone, you can have eternal life. We also saw that prayer, when we pray in John 14, 13, he said this, whatever you ask in my name, that I’ll do. so the Father can be glorified by name of the Son. And so he was teaching them that when they prayed, they had to pray in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, not in the name of God. You pray in the name of Christ, you pray in the power of the Holy Spirit, and you pray to the Father. That’s how prayer works. And a lot of times people’s prayers are not answered Because the Bible says, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. So if you’re praying with unconfessed sin in your life, it’s not gonna go any higher than the ceiling. I don’t care how holy you look. I don’t care how holy you sound. You may be doing it Sunday morning in the pulpit. But if you have unconfessed sin in your life, it’s not going to the throne of God. And if you don’t pray in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, it’s not going to the throne of God. Now, he went on to talk about other things as well. Virtue love. In John 14, 15, tremendous virtue love concept. If you love me, be obedient to my commands. This is where the Bible says in 1 John 5, 3, if you love me, you’ll obey me, and my mandates are not hard. It’s called reciprocal love motivation. It comes from your personal love for God the Father. And it’s responding to he loved us, we love him because he first loved us, the Bible says. This is the greatest virtue you could have, to be obedient to the Father through humility because you love and respect him. another new concept for them that he taught them was the holy spirit is coming in john 14 16. he said i will pray to the father and he will give you a comforter that he can abide with you forever he’s the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it does not see him and does not know him but you will know him because he will dwell in you and be with you. What a tremendous promise. And that’s for you and I. We are sealed with the Holy Spirit in Ephesians 1.13, the day we believe in Christ. We are locked in, and then we’re filled with the Holy Spirit the day we believe in Christ until our first sin we commit. And when we commit our first sin, we’re no longer filled with the Spirit. We’ve quenched the Spirit. We’ve grieved the Spirit, but we are still sealed with the Spirit. And our job is to get back in fellowship as quickly as possible by going to Rebound and confessing our known sin to God. So he told them, I know I’m going away. I’m not going to leave you comfortless. I’ll come back to you, and I’m going to send the Holy Spirit to you. And he wanted them to have a relaxed mental attitude too as well. Very unbelievable. John 14, 16, the Holy Spirit’s coming. And then later in John 14, he wanted them to have this relaxed mental attitude. You know, he said, I’m not going to leave you comfortless. I will come back to you. after his crucifixion, after his resurrection, he did appear to them and others, and he did promise you. that he would never leave you and he would never forsake you. I mentioned an illustration to you. I want you to remember what I mentioned. Listen to Hebrews 13, 5. Let your conversation be without covetousness and be content with such things as you have, for he, that’s Christ, has said, I will never leave you, I will never forsake you. The illustration I gave you was a dog that was discarded on the side of the road by the owner. The owner throws them out, doesn’t want them anymore. The poor dog doesn’t understand what’s happened. They’ve been abandoned inside of the road. And they will sit there for hours waiting on the owner to return. It’s so sad to see something like that. We have two rescue dogs in our home exactly because of that. Somebody threw them out, didn’t want them, left them alone while they just sat there waiting for the owner to come back who never did. Our Lord will never throw you out. He will never discard you as worthless. This is a constant state of joy in our life, which is a confident expectation that he is going to come back for us. Don’t ever forget that. so again he is coming back and then he told us about how to have an RMA and that’s a wonderful thing as well he said listen to this in John 14 27 the bequest of peace listen carefully John 14 27 Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you. Not the peace the world gives, give I unto you. And don’t let your hearts be troubled and don’t be afraid. You know, the world finds peace and sanctuary in possessions. Some people think if they can have money, they can have peace and they can rest. Solomon said that’s not true. He’d done everything in the world that you could do. He tried every detail of life you could try and he still wasn’t happy. And so the peace the Lord Jesus Christ gives is different. It’s not the kind of peace that money can buy. It’s not the kind of peace that having children could provide. It’s not the kind of peace of finding your perfect job or having your perfect home or your perfect car. That’s not what it is. It’s a relaxed mental attitude, an RMA. And this is what happens when you have a flat line in your soul. When you build a flat line in your soul, when you take these 10 problem-solving devices that we talk about, Rebound, one, filling of the Holy Spirit, two, the faith rest drill, three, grace orientation, four, biblical orientation, five, personal sense of destiny, six, personal love for God, seven, impersonal love for all mankind, eight, sharing the happiness of God, nine, occupation with Christ, 10. When you take those 10 problem-solving devices, and establish them as an invisible main line of resistance in your soul, then you can have a totally relaxed mental attitude in spite of any adversity. That’s what’s wonderful about the Christian life. It’s a life free of stress, not free of adversity. The Lord didn’t promise them to have freedom from adversity. but he promised them they could have a relaxed mental attitude in the adversity, that they could have confident expectations of what God was going to do with them and through them and for them. And that’s a wonderful thing for you. The elimination of worry for protection and provision. Listen to me carefully. God will never throw you under the bus. You never have to worry, you never have to be afraid. He will eliminate all of that adversity and give you the great opportunity to have great happiness in your life. I don’t mean eliminate the adversity, but eliminate the stress in your life by using those problem-solving devices. By the way, We have a book on this called Christian Problem Solving. We list all of these 10 problem-solving devices, briefly show you how they work. It’s free if you’d like to order it. Just go to our website, rickhughesministries.org, drop by the website, and order the book, Christian Problem Solving. And you’ll see all of these problem-solving devices made available, and you can read through them for yourself. Hopefully, you’ll learn them and use them. Now, what we want to continue on with this is this is elimination of worry in your life. Elimination of worry in your life, okay? So, in Mark 6, 25 through 34, here’s what you find. Therefore, I say unto you, take no thought for your life or what you’re going to eat or what you’re going to drink. This is Matthew 6, 25 through 34. I might have said Mark. Matthew 6, 25 through 34. So I’m telling you this. Take no thought for your life, what you’re going to eat or what you’re going to drink, nor yet even for your body and what you should put on it. That’s clothes. Is not the life more than meat and the body more than what you wear? Look at the birds in the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into their barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much better than a bird? Which one of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit unto a statue? And why take you thought about clothes? Consider the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don’t toil, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all of his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothes the grass of the fields, which to this day is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? That means trust. That means faithfulness. That means fidelity. That’s what God’s looking for in your life, a complete attitude of trust and fidelity. Do you trust him? Or do you get into panic palace every time something critical hits your life? So he says, therefore, in 31, Matthew 6, take no thought, saying, what shall we eat or what shall we drink or where shall we be clothed? For after all these things, the unbelievers seek. For your heavenly Father knows what you have need of. He knows you need these things. But if you will seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness first, then all of these things shall be added unto you. Do you get that? If you’ll seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, then all of these things will be added unto you. That’s a divine promise of provision. That’s a promise that he won’t throw you under the bus. That’s a promise that he’ll give you the clothes to wear, the food to eat, the air to breathe. That’s a promise from God. If you will seek first the kingdom of God, if you’ll put that priority number one in your life, not building your own kingdom, not establishing your own security, but complete trust and confidence in the work of Christ on the cross and in the eternal provisions of God while you live here. So take therefore no thought for tomorrow, for the morrow shall take thought of the things in itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. So the world is full of evil. It’s the devil’s world. Evil is the opposite of grace. Grace is God’s wonderful provision. Evil is the counterfeit of grace. It’s called works. It’s best manifested in organized religion. So peace here is the Greek word Irenae, which means tranquility under adversity. Let not your hearts be troubled, taraso. That’s an imperative mood verb and it’s a command from God the Father. It means don’t be restless, don’t be agitated, don’t have fear, don’t have mental attitude sins that steal your joy. Neither be afraid. Delio. Delio means to be timid or fearful, another imperative mood. So we’ve got this a couple of times. Don’t be troubled and don’t be afraid. Did you hear that? Don’t be troubled and don’t be afraid. So in John 14, 30, he said this. It’s winding down now. Dinner’s over. They’ve been talking for quite a while. He said, now I will not talk much more with you for the prince of this world is coming and he has nothing in me. In other words, after his arrest, the talking with the Lord Jesus Christ is over. That’s it. That’s the last conversation they’re going to have with him because Satan’s plot is going to come to a head and he’s warned them to get prepared, but he also made an amazing statement. He said Satan has no accusation against him. This means that he’s not done any sin whatsoever against there’s no way he could be disqualified from going to the cross. So dinner’s over. He’s saying, dinner’s over, boys. Let’s roll. And that’s exactly what happened. Are you ready to roll in Jesus Christ? Are you ready to get with the program? I hope you’ve learned. I hope you’ve listened about these things that he taught them. And I hope you’ll come back next week, same time, same place. Until then, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flotline.
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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.
