Developing a mature spiritual life requires consistent, high-quality nourishment from God’s Word taught by a well-qualified pastor. No Christian can read the Bible and attain spiritual maturity on their own. The Bible is a textbook designed by God to be taught by a man with the spiritual gift of pastor-teacher. “Your word I have treasured in my heart that I may not sin against You” (Ps 119:11). Scripture is layered—the more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know. When you understand God’s Word and store it in your heart, it reveals your weaknesses and strengths.
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 around. It won’t be long, just about 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, a whole lot of education. And absolutely no manipulation because we don’t con you. We’re not trying to hustle any money out of you. We’re not going to try to sell you anything or ask you to join anything. We would like for you to listen. Listen as I try to verify and identify God’s plan for your life. If I can do that, then you certainly have the freedom and the privilege to orient and adjust to the plan if you want to. We’re playing in about 100 radio stations this Sunday morning, and I thank you for giving me a few minutes of your time. It’s always my great privilege to be able to bring you this information as God allows me the opportunity to do so. And today we have something that’s really critical to talk about. You hear me all the time on this radio show saying you need a well-qualified pastor. I bring that up almost every message. You need a well-qualified pastor. Today I want to talk to you about that very thing. Why do you need a well-qualified pastor? What’s the deal about that? And give you some scriptural information about what the Bible says about having a well-qualified pastor. So if you’ve listened to this show on a regular basis, you know I constantly encourage you to get under the teaching ministry of that well-qualified pastor. Unfortunately, I guess there are many pastors and both, unfortunately, female and male, many pastors that don’t spend much time teaching the scriptures. Developing a mature spiritual life requires much nourishment from the word of God on a consistent basis. And if you’re not being fed, you will not grow. So you must be under the ministry of a well-qualified pastor that is feeding you scripture so that you can make the application of that scripture into your life, not entertaining you. So today I hope to clarify why this is important. So let’s admit one thing, okay? Here’s my first statement. There are many people in pulpits that don’t need to be there. Their messages are sometimes political, sometimes social, and most of the time showmanship. Listen to the word of God through the prophet Jeremiah and what he had to say about people like this in his day. Thus says the Lord of hosts, Jeremiah 23, 16. Hearken not unto the words of the prophets, that prophesy unto you. They make you vain. They speak a vision of their own heart and not out of the mouth of the Lord. And then in Jeremiah 23, 21, and 22, I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran. I have not spoken to them, and yet they prophesy. But if they had stood in my counsel and had caused my people to hear my words, Then they should have turned them from their evil ways and from the evil of their doings. Wow, what a tremendous statement. If they had taught my word, they would have changed the population’s mindset. They would have turned the people away from their evil ways. And that’s what’s happening today. The word of God is not being taught. Christians are not being taught the scripture. And you know, unfortunately, they don’t want to be taught the scripture. I’ve seen many churches where if you try to teach the scripture, people get bored and they don’t want that. They want the pastor to love them and hug them and come visit with them, drink tea or coffee with them, call on them. But if the pastor tries to teach the word of God for more than an hour a week, they freak out about that. Well, what exactly were these false prophets prophesying? What were they saying? Jeremiah 23, 27 tells you what they were saying. They cause my people to forget my name by their dreams, which they tell every man to his neighbor, as their fathers had forgotten my name for Baal. Jeremiah went on to say, The prophet that has a dream, let him tell his dream. But he that has my word, let him speak my word faithfully. And that’s the key word, faithfully. So what is the chaff to the wheat, saith the Lord? Is not my word like as a fire, saith the Lord, like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces? Therefore, behold, I’m against the prophets, saith the Lord, that steal my word, every one from his neighbor. I’m against the prophets, saith the Lord, that use their tongues and say, God says… Behold, I’m against them that prophesy false dreams and say the Lord told them to do so. They cause my people to err by their lies and by their lightness. Yet I did not send them. I did not command them. They will not profit the people at all, says the Lord. There you go. The only thing that’s going to profit you in your local church is a well-qualified pastor that is teaching the scriptures and Not talking about, I have a dream and this could change the nation. Follow my dream. You may wonder what Jeremiah was referring to in these passages. I’ll tell you what he was referring to. Jeremiah’s words were a warning to the southern kingdom of Judah for their unfaithfulness and their rejection of God’s law. The chapter that I read to you identifies the widespread deceit and sinfulness of the people with Jeremiah’s call to acknowledge their sin and be humble before God. And those false prophets that he spoke of in that passage were dreamers, deluded by their own minds, their own human viewpoint thinking. And their sermons were designed to make the people of Judah forget God’s name through the worship of Baal. And you know it’s unfortunate, but organized religion in America today is full of false prophets like this. Many of these so-called pastors don’t have the spiritual gift necessary to shepherd a flock of believers. And not only that, but many are untrained in the languages and as a result are not capable of rightly dividing the Word of God. Untrained in the languages, what do I mean by that? Well, it was not written in English. Unfortunately, the Apostle Paul did not carry a King James Bible around. The New Testament was written mainly in Koine Greek dialect. If you’re going to interpret it and understand what’s there, you have to know the languages. You have to understand the emphasis and the importance of the languages. The Old Testament written in Hebrew and Aramaic. So any good, well-qualified pastor is going to learn those languages and how to interpret them and how to go to the original scriptures and mandates and bring them to you. So unfortunately, many people today call themselves preachers, are not trained, don’t have the gift, don’t have the spiritual gift of pastor, teacher. I’m gonna say it again. They don’t have the spiritual gift of pastor, teacher. And they’re not able to go to the scriptures and to break the scriptures open for you so you’ll understand what’s there. They’re untrained in the languages and they’re not capable of dividing the word of God. 2 Timothy 2.15, here’s what Paul told Timothy. Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Now, if you can rightly divide it, obviously you can wrongly divide it. That means you can say this is true and it’s not true. And so Paul cautioned Timothy to study the word to be approved unto God, a workman, a pastor that needs not to be ashamed. What about this spiritual gift of pastor-teacher that I’m talking about? Where did I get that idea that you gotta have a spiritual gift of pastor-teacher? In Ephesians 4, 11, Paul wrote, and Jesus Christ, that’s he, it says he, and he, that’s Jesus Christ, gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers. From previous studies that I’ve done, maybe with you, I hope so, we’ve seen the gift of apostleship and the gift of profit are no longer in action today. The reason is to be an apostle, you had to have seen the Lord Jesus Christ face to face. And of course, since the scriptures were completed and circulated, there’s no need for somebody to prophesy because everything is now written down for us to understand any future events upcoming. Revelation warns about this in 22, 18, for I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book. If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in the book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life and out of the holy city and from the things that are written in the book. The worst thing you could do as a communicator of scripture is to misrepresent God and to try to teach something that is not there. But the two communication gifts that still function today, one of them is evangelist, and that’s what I am. I’m an evangelist. The Greek word euagaleion is the Greek word. And pastor, teacher, and the Greek word for that is poimen kai didaskalos. We learn from the Greek New Testament and from the grammar that pastor, teacher, poimen kai didaskalos is one word, not two words. Poimane or pastor means one that can teach Bible doctrine without the authority related to the spiritual gift. In other words, you gotta have the gift And didaskalos is a teacher and it indicates his function. So the pastor or the teacher has the gift and his function is to teach the word of God, okay? Didaskalos, poimen didaskalos means to teach a group. Teaching under the traditional principles of face-to-face teaching inside the local church and sometimes even non-face-to-face teaching outside the local church. You got to remember that when Paul wrote these letters to these local churches, it was non-face-to-face. He wasn’t there. He sent letters, and those letters were read and studied and understood. That’s non-face-to-face teaching. So Paul’s epistle, for example, to the Colossians was non-face-to-face teaching of the believers the apostle had never even met before. And I know a lot of people that study non-face-to-face. There are a lot of great pastors, and you can get the information and study in the privacy of your own home if you don’t live in their city or live near them. Of course, some people have actually chosen to move to their churches so they can be a part of those local congregations. But most male believers with a spiritual gift to Pastor Teacher, I said male believers, not female. Most male believers with a spiritual gift to Pastor Teacher are neither brilliant nor original thinkers. I can assure you I’m not brilliant. I’m an evangelist and I’m not an original thinker. I get a few original thoughts, but not many. But as a pastor, You’re not even required to increase your IQ, but you are required to be faithful in the principle of studying and teaching, studying and teaching the Word of God. So let me give you a few principles that I learned from my pastor years ago who pastored his church for 50 plus years. Here’s one of the principles he taught me. The spiritual gift of pastor-teacher is the divinely appointed vehicle for the communication of the mystery doctrine of the church age and for every believer priest to understand and learn. Again, the spiritual gift to pastor-teacher is a divinely appointed vehicle for the communication of the mystery doctrine of the church age to every believer priest. That’s you and I. And so the pastor-teacher teaches us the word of God and we learn it and we apply it into our life. All right, two. No believer can attain spiritual maturity and become an invisible hero, or even for that matter, glorify God apart from what we call post-salvation learning or changing the way he thinks. My pastor used a big word. He taught it to me. It’s called epistemological rehabilitation. That means to change the way you think, to think correctly, and that’s to use the mind of Christ. So we’re never gonna be able to reach spiritual maturity, never gonna be an invisible hero or glorify God if we don’t change the way we think. So point three, this means that no believer can read the Bible and attain spiritual maturity on his own. If that was true, you wouldn’t need a gift of pastor teacher. I know you like to read your Bible and there’s nothing wrong with that and I salute you for you having read the Bible through. But that’s not how you grow spiritually. The Bible is indeed our textbook, but the gift of Pastor Teacher is designed to communicate the specifics of the mystery doctrine of the church age and cause spiritual growth in our lives. So the Word of God, the Scriptures, must be learned under the authority, and that authority is vested in the spiritual gift to pastor-teacher. So if you don’t have a well-qualified pastor and you’re trying to learn everything on your own, that’s like giving you an algebra book and say, I’m not going to give you a teacher. You’ve got to figure it out on your own, and you’re never going to do it. So every believer, point four, must take responsibility for his own decisions. Therefore, the believer must make decisions with regard to his selection of his own pastor teacher and his own faithfulness to learn and apply the word of God from that pastor teacher. Point five, failure to take in the word of God on a daily basis, failure to grow in grace and to attain spiritual maturity, is directly related to the fall of a client nation to God, and that’s us, America. It’s one of the reasons that we got in trouble, and we are still in serious trouble in spite of who’s been elected. Therefore, the believer’s attitude toward the mystery doctrines of the church as taught by the right pastor, whoever he is, becomes the major issue in the preservation of the client nation. If we don’t get men in the pulpits that teach the word of God clearly, lucidly, succinctly, we will be dissolved as a client nation. We’ll be set aside. So no believer, last point, can read the Bible daily for himself and discover and learn the mystery doctrine of the church age, nor understand the mechanics of the protocol plan of God. No believer can just pick up the Bible and learn those 10 problem-solving devices that you hear me talk about all the time. Those were taught by God the Holy Spirit to my pastor who retaught them to me, and I reteach them to you. It’s like he taught them to thousands of other people. But if you think you can just pick up your Bible and go sit in a corner, get a cup of coffee, and grow to spiritual maturity by reading your way through the Bible, you’re wrong. You must be under the authority of a well-qualified pastor to teach you these things. Because, listen, if this principle is not true, if what I’m telling you is not true, then why in the world would God provide the gift of A pastor teacher, why give the gift? What’s the need for the gift if you can do it on your own? You cannot. That’s why a pastor teacher is not an activity director. It’s not his job to keep you entertained or to provide activities for you so you won’t be bored. I mean, if he spends daily hours every day studying the scriptures, he’s not gonna have time to see to your entertainment needs, I promise you, because it takes a lot of work. I mean, even these messages that I do take several days to put them together, and they’re just short messages. So let’s consider it this way. Okay, I’m gonna give you an illustration. If you only get 30 minutes of teaching on Sunday morning, I mean after all the music and the special announcements and the offertory and all that stuff, and then maybe 30 minutes on Sunday night, and some churches I know have even quit holding Sunday night services, well then maybe you get another 30 minutes on Wednesday night. That could add up to maybe 90 minutes a week of pastor-led Bible study. Now, let’s make the analogy. Consider you have a child in the first grade. We all have had children that go through the first grade, but they’re only going to go for 90 minutes a week. How long do you think it’s going to take before that child gets out of the first grade? It’ll take forever. The Word of God has to be taught on a consistent basis, and I recommend a daily basis. And if you just think you’re gonna grow spiritually by going 90 minutes a week, you’re dead wrong. Say, but I do my daily devotional. That’s not it. You bought a book called Somebody’s Daily Devotional. Great, you get a good morning devotional thought. That’s okay, that’s a good way to start the day out. But the best way to start the day out, I had a friend tell me one time, What do you do? He said, I read the daily devotion. What do you do? And I said, I listen to my pastor for an hour every day as he teaches me the word of God from the pulpit of his church. Learning how to live the spiritual life requires a lifetime of study. I said lifetime. Not you doing 10 minutes of devotion each morning, but you being fed by your pastor who will hopefully prepare a wonderful, wonderful meal for you. Now, I’m kind of raking you over the coals, I know, but there’s no excuses. Even if you don’t have a well-qualified pastor near you, there are resources available where you can join in a study from a great pastor, and you can do it daily on the World Wide Web. Just click away. In my situation, that’s exactly what I do. I listen to my pastor over the internet. His church is in Houston, Texas, and I keep up with what he teaches five hours a week, teaching from the Word of God from the pulpit on the internet. I can’t move to Houston. I’m too old to up and move to Houston. But that’s how I do it, and you can do it the same way. There’s no excuse for that. No excuse whatsoever. If the World Wide Web is just a click away and you say, well, I don’t know how to use the Internet. Well, learn how to use the Internet. And you say, well, that’s too much trouble. I don’t even have the Internet. Okay, well, there are a lot of great books, a lot of great books written by well-qualified pastors. If you could study it that way. Sometimes it’s written. You might not hear his voice. You can read what he says. And we can provide that for you. If you’d like to know how to get that written information, you let me know. I’ll put you in touch with my pastor who has hundreds of books for you. We have books for you. These are all free regardless of my, coming from my ministry or from the ministry of my pastor. They’re free, and you can read if you can’t attend. You can read if you can’t do the internet. But you have to spend time in the Word of God on a daily basis. You have to be fed. That’s how you grow spiritually. Okay? All of these shows that I do, all of our books that I give you, They’re for you to exercise your own volition, but you have to go get it. Nobody’s going to hold your hand. Nobody’s going to drag you to Bible class. You’ve got to be hungry enough to go get it, hungry enough to want it, hungry enough to go out and get it. In Psalm 119, verses 9 through 11, listen to some of these scriptures I’m about to give you. Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to thy word. With my whole heart I have sought you. Do not let me wander from your commandments. Your word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against you. Oh my gosh. Your word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against you. How can you learn it if you don’t hear it and how can you hear it if it’s not presented to you? That’s why the Bible says faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. You can hear it vocally or you can hear it in a written and printed text, but you must hear it. And then when you hear it, it’s going to, as you’ve heard me talk about before, it becomes what we call information heard, but it’s not information applied. There are two Greek words, the difference in that, and that’s why the Bible talks about your mind or the Greek word nous and your heart or the Greek word kardia. So when you hear something that’s in your mind, you comprehend it. But until you, by faith, believe it and tuck it away in your heart, then it doesn’t really become helpful for you, does it? I mean, if you hear the pastor teach something on Sunday morning and you walk out and forget what he taught, You didn’t take notes. You didn’t write anything down. You dozed through most of the sermon. What good did it do you? Oh, well, I went. I showed up. Whoop-de-doo. You get a star for that. You get a star because you showed up every Sunday for two years. What did you learn and what did you apply into your life? Your word, Psalm 119 says, I hid it in my heart. For what reason? So that I would not sin against you. Wow, that’s pretty powerful. I hope you’re listening, I hope you’re learning. Let’s go to another scripture, James 1.22. Be a doer of the word and not just a hearer only, deceiving your own self. For if you’re just a hearer of the word and not a doer, you’re like a man beholding his natural face in a glass. For you look at yourself and then go your way, and straightway you forgot what manner of man you are. But whoever looks into the perfect law of liberty, that’s the Bible, and continues therein, that’s in the Bible, He being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the word, this man will be blessed in his deeds. That means God says, look, take my word, hear it, learn it, and apply it into your life, and I’ll bless you. That’s exactly what that’s telling you. So what kind of guy are you? Are you a hearer, or are you a doer, or just a hearer? I did a message one time called Seekers or Peekers. And a lot of people just want to take a peek, and they don’t want to seek. You’re not there to audit the course. You’re there to learn and apply the course. In Joshua 1.8, the Bible says this. Joshua wrote these words. This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth. But you shall meditate therein day and night that you mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein. For then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. You hear that? Don’t forget it. This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth. He was talking about the law of Moses. I’m talking about the complete canon of scripture. Learn it. Listen to it. Believe it. Apply it into your life. How are you gonna do that? You’re gonna find that well-qualified pastor who will teach it to you with no hidden agenda. He’s not gonna try to entertain you. He’s not gonna take you on a cruise. He’s not gonna hire somebody to come in and sing for you. He’s gonna sit up in that pulpit and stand up and teach you the Word of God, and it’s gonna take him hours to get ready, hours. So if he’s gonna stand up there and teach you for 30 or 40 minutes the Scripture, I assure you he’s gonna spend four to five, six hours every day studying the Scripture, trying to get out of it what it really says. Here’s what will amaze you. The more you learn, the more you understand you don’t know. Did you hear me? Because scripture is layered. If you study a verse one time and you think you got it mastered and you go back and study it again, you figure out what you missed. Scripture is layered and the more you learn, the more you’re gonna realize you don’t know. That’s why the word of God is alive and powerful and sharper than a two-edged sword. When you learn it, it goes into your heart, store it in your heart, and it cuts you apart. It identifies your weaknesses and identifies your strengths and lets you build on that. So my prayer is for you, that you will have the courage to call me or get in touch with me and say, where can I find a well-qualified pastor. Whatever it takes, I’m willing to do it. If that’s you, then my job is successful. I have done my job to get you to that place where you can get under the ministry of that man that can feed you and teach you God’s word and shepherd your soul for you. So I hope you’re listening. I’m sorry if I stumbled around a little bit, but I hope you paid attention. I promise you this is true. I didn’t make it up. You heard what I read from the Word of God. And I thank you for giving me a few minutes of your time today. I hope you’ll come back next week. Same time, same place. We’ll have some different information at that time. And I appreciate you listening today. Until then, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flatline.
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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.
