SPEAKER 01 : 0:08

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

SPEAKER 02 : 0:23

Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, please stick around. Be about 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, some education, and we will do this without any type of manipulation. That’s right, we’re not trying to con folks, not going to ask you for any money. We’re not going to ask you to join up, fess it up, give it up, nothing like that. This show is simply about giving you accurate information, information that, if you accept it, will help you verify and identify God’s plan for your life. And if you would like to orient and adjust to that plan, that’s up to you. You’re responsible for your life, for every decision that you make. And as you know, bad decisions limit future options. So the Flatline comes to you every Sunday on this local radio station. And I thank you for giving me a few minutes of your time. We promise we won’t lead you astray or bore you or mislead you. I promise you that. Well, we’d like to impress on you as God has some wonderful problem-solving devices. We call them the FLOT line, Forward Line of Troops, F-L-O-T. It’s a military analogy. And what we’ve done is break it into 10 unique problem-solving devices. If you learn them, if you use them, they act as a main line of resistance in your soul. And why do they do that? Because they can stop the outside sources of adversity before they ever become the inside source of stress. That’s why we always say adversity is inevitable. However, stress is optional. Adversity is what circumstances do to you, but stress is what you do to yourself. So the Flatline Radio Show is going to teach those 10 unique problem-solving devices, such as rebound, how do we handle the problem of sin? We rebound, we confess our sin, 1 John 1, 9. That’s the first problem-solving device. Then we move to the filling of the Holy Spirit. That solves the problem of our genetically formed sin nature that’s within us where the Bible says there’s a war going on within us. The flesh wars against the spirit and the spirit wars against the flesh. And that’s why some days you feel like a nut and some days you don’t. That’s why you can’t always do what you wish you could do. Paul even put it the same way. I’d like to do what I want to do, but I don’t always do what I want to do. Romans 7, you can read it for yourself. So we have that battle going on within us, and it’s the sin nature versus God, the Holy Spirit, if you’re a Christian. And you have to decide which one you’re going to let control your life. Then we have the faith rest drill, problem solving device number three, standing on the promises of God. Tremendous promises of God, over 7,000 of them in the Bible. All for you, just like a check you can cash in and depend on God to finance that cash. When you cash that check, he’ll back it up. And then there’s grace orientation, biblical orientation, having a personal sense of destiny, having personal love for God, having impersonal love for others, sharing the happiness of God, and then eventually occupation with Christ. Ten unique problem-solving devices, which we’ll go back over from time to time. And I hope if you’d like to know more about it, you’ll write to us. And we have a book called Christian Problem Solving. We can supply that and free of charge without any donations asked. And you can read about it for yourself as we get back to reteach it eventually in the next few weeks because we have so many new radio stations coming on right now. We are currently broadcasting in all 50 states across the United States of America. And this is a real test for us. This is a step of faith because we believe if God’s in it, he’ll pay for it. So I appreciate your prayers and your encouragement and thank you for listening. Today I want to talk to you about a topic that’s very interesting. It’s called whose fool are you? Whose fool are you? The New Testament Greek word for fool is an interesting word. You’ve heard it before. It’s called moros, M-O-R-O-S. And we get the word moron from that. You know, you remember when you were a kid, the little moron jokes. And so the Greek word for fool is moros. That’s a descriptive adjective of a foolish person who’s a dull, sluggish individual. And in Matthew 5, 22, the Lord Jesus Christ said these words. But I say unto you that whosoever is angry with his brother without cause shall be in danger of the judgment. Whosoever shall say to his brother, Rakah, shall be in danger of the council. But whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. The scribes and the Pharisees said that a person who referred to another person as Rakah meaning an empty-headed person was in danger of being sued for libel before the council or the Sanhedrin. On the other hand, the Lord Jesus Christ said that whoever calls another person a fool will have to answer to God. That’s not saying that if you call someone a fool, you’re going to be condemned to hell. That’s not what it’s saying. But rather, Jesus is telling us that to utter such words is to place oneself in a worse condition at the time of judgment. So number one, our Lord Jesus Christ is inferring that murder does indeed bring judgment, but also anger, insolence, contemptuous speech, just as evil, just as nasty, and will be punished just as greatly, but not in eternity. Now, you’re not going to get to heaven, and you’re not going to be lined up and whipped because you did some bad things on the earth. That’s not what this verse is saying. But he is saying that these sort of sins are punished in time, especially for a believer. When you break fellowship with God, you get mad, you get angry, you lose your temper, and you call somebody a fool. And this is you blowing off steam. You fool, you get mad, and you may be driving down the interstate. Someone cuts you off, and you yell out to yourself, you fool. You get out of fellowship with God when you do that. You break fellowship with God. And by doing that, I mean you quench the Holy Spirit and you grieve the Holy Spirit. He’s not able to help you. And when you break fellowship with God, you get under control of your sin nature. And as long as you’re under control of your sin nature, you’re going to sin repeatedly. And that’s why God brings in discipline to straighten us up in Hebrews 12, talks about it. Those that he loves, he chastens and sometimes has to scourge with a whip. So the Lord will discipline you for your mental attitude sins and your sins of the tongue. Our Lord Jesus Christ gave this statement right after the Sermon on the Mount, which we call the Beatitudes. And it’s right here that he put a significant importance on mental attitude sins and sins of the tongue, sins that people don’t even realize they’re doing sometimes. What he’s not saying is that if you call someone a fool, you won’t go to heaven. That’s not what he’s saying. What he’s saying is we should be very careful when we accuse others of sin simply because we don’t agree with them. Does the Bible talk about fools? Well, certainly it does. Listen to Ephesians 5, 17. Wherefore, be you not unwise, and the Greek word there is foolish. Be you not unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. The word unwise is aphron, A-P-H-R-O-N. And that’s an adjective meaning foolish or stupid or lacking common sense. The word is most often translated foolish, although it’s translated unwise here. And a modified, expanded translation of that verse, I could put it like this to you. Because of this, stop becoming fools, which essentially is letting your emotions rule your spiritual life. This is a challenge to the church at Ephesus, to redeem the time since the days were evil. And there’s never been a more challenging statement than today. The brief periods that you go to church or attend worship are designed to learn something, not to get emotional. That’s why we have a local body of believers in a local church. It’s not a lonely hearts club. It’s not a cruise ship. It’s a classroom where you learn the word of God. That’s why the Bible says, study to show yourself approved unto God. A word that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. The teacher is the pastor. He has a spiritual gift called, in the Greek New Testament, the poimen kai didaskalos, the shepherd and the teacher. And his job is to instruct you clearly in what the Bible says. And your job is to learn it and apply it into your life. If you don’t have a local church, contact me. Maybe I can help you find a good one near you where there is a well-qualified pastor. And if not, we can at least tell you where to order some information from people that I know about that are good. Now, had to take a drink of water just for a second. The foolish believer does not redeem the time Nor does he or she ever come to understand the will of God for his life because they never take time to learn it. So the plain truth is, as Ecclesiastes 7.17 says, do not be excessively wicked and don’t be a fool. Why should you die before your time? I mean, God has appointed each one of us a certain amount of days. He knows the time and the matter and the place of our departure. But you can shorten that time. by getting out of fellowship, living under control of your sin nature and coming under what we call the sin unto death. So let’s give some principles here. Again, the verse, it does Ecclesiastes 7, 17. Do not be excessively wicked and do not be a fool. Why should you die before your time? Excessively wicked relates to the arrogance complex of emotional sins. And two, this verse implies that since God is responsible for our time on earth, our manner, our place of departure, that he always takes the wicked and the foolish first. That’s exactly true. Those are the ones that go before they should go. And there are a lot of people that checked out way too soon because they were stupid and did something stupid. So there is a timing for you both in life and in death. And if you’re out of sync with that timing, that’s a disaster because it’s probably the greatest disaster you can ever face in this life to be out of sync with God’s timing. be ahead of him or behind him and not listening to him. So the quickest way that you can become a fool is to feed your own arrogance. Now let me remind you about arrogance. Arrogance comes in four stages, self-justification, self-deception, self-absorption, and eventually self-destruction. So an arrogant person will justify why he’s right and maybe God’s wrong. An arrogant person will not only lie to others but lie to himself and eventually become completely self-absorbed with whatever he’s doing by justifying it. And he may, if he’s a believer, he may go under the sun and to death. Romans 1.22, although they claim to be wise, they’re really arrogant. They became fools. Although they claim to be wise, they became fools. And they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like the corruptible man and to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things. And then because of this, God gave them up to the uncleanness through the lust of their own hearts to dishonor their own bodies themselves, those who changed the truth of God into a lie and worshiped and served the creature more than the creator, the one who is to be blessed forever, amen. So if you read that Romans 1.22 passage and read it completely through, you’ll be shocked about what it’s talking about. It’s not my subject today, but this is what arrogance can do. It can take what’s evil and make it sound like it’s good. And it will take what’s good and turn it into evil. And that’s the genius of Satan. So arrogance is something you’ve got to avoid. When you get into arrogance, you live like a fool because you justify why you’re right and other people are wrong. Anger is the emotional sin of the fool, the Bible tells us in Ecclesiastes 7.9. Be not hasty in your spirit to be angry, for anger rests in the bosom of a fool. And then we see in Proverbs 13.20 that wise people don’t associate with fools. Proverbs 13.20, he who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of a fool will suffer misery. I would advise you, if you’ve got some friends that are stupid fools, leave them alone, get away from them. They’ll shorten your time on earth if you hang around them, I promise you. And the Bible says in Proverbs 17, 25, that a foolish child is grief to their parents. Proverbs 17, 25, a foolish son is a grief to his father and bitterness to the woman who gave birth to him. So what’s the profile of a foo when we study whose foo are you? A foo despises wisdom and instruction, Proverbs 1.7. A foo dies for lack of understanding, Proverbs 19.21. The food three is wise in his own eyes. Proverbs three, seven, be not wise in your own eyes. That verse says the fear of the Lord or respect the Lord and depart from evil. Be not wise in your own eyes, but respect the Lord and depart from evil. Number four, here’s another profile of a food. Not only is he despised wisdom, not only does he die for lack of understanding, not only is he wise in his own eyes, but he’s naive. The fool is naive, Proverbs 1.22. How long, O you naive ones, will you love being stupid? And Proverbs 12.25. The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but he that will listen to counsel is wise. And finally, the human viewpoint of a fool is called, the viewpoint of the fool is called human viewpoint, not divine viewpoint. He thinks in terms of human realms, not spiritual realms. Proverbs 29, 11, a fool expresses his own emotions, but a wise person controls them. There are fools in the Bible. The Bible talks about them in Psalm 14, 1. The fool has said in his heart, there’s no God. That’s the atheistic fool. He has a mind with finite limitations that does not perceive God, and therefore now he proclaims God doesn’t exist. And without faith, he will never find God to start with because it’s not through empirical data that one finds God, nor is it through rationalism. It’s only through faith. So the atheist, the Bible says, is a fool. The rich fool in Luke 12, 16 through 20, and the Lord Jesus Christ spoke a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plenty, and he brought thought to himself saying, what shall I do with all of this? I have no room to store up my fruits. And he said, I know what I’ll do. I’ll pull down my barns and build bigger barns. And I will stow all of my fruits and all my goods in these bigger barns. And then I’ll say to my soul, soul, you have much goods laid up for many years. So take it easy, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, you are a fool because this night your soul will be required of you. And then who shall all these things belong to? This man has a false sense of values because wealth does not solve the problem of your eternal future. You know, sic tron sic gloria mundi, the glory of the world fades away, the old Latin phrase. In Mark 8, 36, for what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world? and loses his soul. So that fool, the fool we’re talking about here, is in trouble. He’s the rich fool. And then there’s the shameless fool in Proverbs 14.9 that makes a mockery of sin. He feels no guilt of sin. Sin always bring the barrage of God’s judgment on us every time it does that. He has to because his justice will judge us. So in Romans 6.23, the wages of sin is death. The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. And then there’s the Christian fool, my favorite kind of fool. We are fools for Christ’s sake, 1 Corinthians 4.10, Paul wrote, written by the Apostle Paul after meeting the Lord Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus. In his days as an apostle, we’re met with a lot of suffering, a lot of hardship, beaten by the Romans, stoned by the religious Hebrews, shipwrecked, robbed, cold, naked, exhausted, but willing to suffer all of these hardships for Christ’s sake. In 1 Corinthians 3.18, he wrote, Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seems to be wise in this world, let him become a fool so that he may be wise. This is interesting. Paul’s saying you want to be wise, you got to become a fool. That means you can’t live by human viewpoint thinking. In Ephesians 5, 17, again, I remind you of that verse. Wherefore, be ye not foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. So if you want to be wise, come to understand what the will of God is. This is a personal sense of destiny for you. Can I ask you a question? What is God’s will for your life? Where does he want you to be? What does he want you to do? What does he want you to say? There’s his geographical will. There’s a place God wants you to serve him. Do you know where that is? There is something God wants you to say if you represent him. Do you know what that is? I mean, there’s so much to understanding the will of God. We’ve done series on it, and I guess we’re going to have to do another series on it. how to know the will of God. So you can’t afford to be unwise. You must understand what the will of God is. However, the fool is never interested in that. He’s only interested in his own plan. So you can be a fool for Christ if you wish. I hope you will be. You can be a fool if you want to be, just a normal fool, just a fool that rejects everything we’ve been talking about today. Are the fool for Christ? There’s a famous comedian that said, you might be a redneck if you do these things. You might have heard him, Jeff Foxworthy. Here’s something I’d like to run by you. You might be a fool for Christ if you believe some of these things I’m about to tell you. You might be a fool for Christ if you believe some of these things I’m about to tell you. Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the anointed son of God? Do you believe that? In the Bible, in John, right after John chapter 13, going through John 15, as the Lord Jesus Christ instructed the disciples after the Last Supper, he said these words. He said, you believe in God, believe also in me. He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. And no man comes to the Father but by me. Do you believe that? Are you foolish enough to believe that Jesus Christ is the anointed son of God and it’s only through Christ that you can have eternal life? Because there are a lot of people that would claim to be your, that would tell you you’re a fool if you believe that. Do you believe it? Are you willing to be called a fool? Are you? Are you willing to stand up in front of your friends and testify that I believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to God and the only way to get to heaven is through Christ? Here’s another question. Do you believe the Bible is factual or literal? Do you believe that? That it’s real? I mean, some people don’t believe it. Some people think it’s just make-believe and it’s full of stories. I hear it all the time. Well, there’s other books and there’s other scriptures. Why should I believe what’s in there? It’s written by men. Do you believe when it says the word of God is alive and powerful and sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of some of the soul and the spirit and the joints and the marrow, it is a critic of thought and intents of the heart? Do you believe all scriptures God breathed and is profitable for doctrine, instruction, correction, and proof in righteousness, that the man of God might be mature, thoroughly furnished unto all good works? Do you believe that? Because that Bible is the inspired Word of God. And the Word of God lives and abides forever, we’re told. So even when you get to heaven, the Bible’s going to be there. The Word of God will be there. And if God wants to speak to you, he will speak to you through that Bible, through the verses that are in the Bible. That’s how you discover God’s will for your life, through the Bible. And hopefully you’ve got a well-qualified pastor to help you understand it. See, it was written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, especially the Koine Greek dialect of the New Testament. And when we take the Bible and break it down line by line, word by word, verse by verse, it helps if you’ve got someone who understands the Greek language that it was written in and can help explain what various words mean. Do you believe the Bible is factual? Do you believe it’s literal? Then you’re a fool for Christ’s sake. Great. I’m proud of you. Do you believe in a literal hell and a literal lake of fire? If you do, you’re a fool for Christ’s sake because there is a literal hell and there is a literal lake of fire. And the Bible says, whoever’s name is not found written in the Lamb’s book of life will be cast into the lake of fire. This is a second death. And here’s the truth about it. You’re either going to be born twice or die twice. The first death is physical. The second death, cast into the lake of fire, Revelation 20. The first birth, you’re born physically. The second birth, you’re born spiritually, born into the family of God through faith alone in Christ alone. Do you believe that? Do you believe in a literal hell and a literal lake of fire as the Bible talks about? Then you must be a fool for Christ’s sake. Do you believe you can live a life free of worry and a life free of fear? And the Bible says, cast all your burdens upon him for he cared for you. There’s over 7,000 promises in the Bible I mentioned earlier. Do you believe that these are, they’re free and they’re there for you and you don’t have to be afraid? Fear not for I am with thee. When Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior told the disciples, I’ve told you these things so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be full. He’s telling them there’s a way to live even though he was living, he was leaving. There’s a way to live in spite of the adversity, in spite of what was coming. There was a way to live free of worry and free of fear. If you believe that, you might be a fool for Christ’s sake. Do you possess an objective optimism based on the promises of Scripture? Do you possess an objective optimism based on the promises of Scripture? Because there’s a lot of them there for you. A lot of promises right there in the Bible, and God would never lie to you. We know that. This is what the Bible teaches us in 1 John 5. He would never lie. Never, ever would God lie. He’s truthful. He’s immutable. He doesn’t change. And so if you have that faith, that objective optimism, that’s faith to the 10th power, we call it. It’s based on the promises of God. And one of those promises is that when you die, you’ll go to heaven. You’ll have eternal life. There’ll be no more pain, no more tears, no more sorrow. The old things will be passed away and all things can become new. Do you believe that? Do you possess that faith on the promises of the scripture? And you might be a fool for Christ’s sake. Do you believe God hears and answers your prayers as the Bible says he will? Then you might be a fool for Christ’s sake. What can a fool for Christ expect from the cosmic system, from the world? Well, in Acts 5, 40 and 41, they called the apostles in and had them beaten. And they ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus. And they let them go. And the apostles left the Sanhedrin rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the name of Jesus Christ. As a fool for Christ, you may face this in your life too. Would you be willing to be worthy to suffer for the name of Christ? Then you might be a fool as well. I count it a joy to be a fool for Christ’s sake, as Paul said. And I pray that you will too. Because the life that God has for you cannot be measured in human terms. It’s an amazing life that starts with faith alone in Christ alone. And as you grow and learn God’s word and apply it into your life, it’s amazing the things that he has for you. I hope you’re listening. I hope you’re learning. I hope you stay in touch. Until next week, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you now for listening to The Flatline.

SPEAKER 01 : 27:11

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.