In this riveting episode of The Flatline, join host Rick Hughes as we delve into the critical topic of humility. Drawing from biblical scriptures, Rick contrasts the devastating effects of arrogance with the power of genuine humility. Discover how humility can be fostered from a young age, starting right in the home, and explore the pragmatic applications in real-world scenarios. We are also taken through historical biblical references, using characters like King David and Peter to illustrate the transformative impact that humility has on the soul.
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 FLOT line, F-L-O-T, FLOT line, Forward Line of Troops. That’s those 10 problem-solving devices you store in the compartments of your soul that stop the outside sources of adversity from ever becoming the inside sources of stress. If you hang with me for a few minutes, maybe about 30 minutes, I’ll seek to give you that information so that you’ll be able to verify and identify God’s plan for your life and hopefully you will orient and adjust to the plan. But I’m Rick Hughes, host of the Flatline Radio Show, heard every Sunday morning on this radio station and on many others across the nation. Thank you for giving me a few minutes of your time. Let me remind you of our website, rickhughesministries.org, rickhughesministries.org. We don’t sell anything there. We’re not trying to hawk any money from you. But you can go there and see the various books we’ve written, and they are all free. If you’d like to study, especially God’s Grace in Aging, our latest book, or also we have a book called These Things, which was kind of new this last year. I hope you’ll take advantage of those and order those books today if you’d like. Also, we have our transcripts from the year 2019, 2020, 2021. That’s a transcript of every radio show we produced. And it’s in a written form so you can read it for yourself if you’d like to have that to add to your library of notes. Okay? So thank you for listening today. Here we go. Are you ready? Something I want to talk to you about today is very critical because in recent weeks you’ve heard me speak about devastating effects of arrogance. Arrogance in the believer’s life. Last week I talked about arrogance quite a bit. And you should know by now that an arrogant attitude is demonstrated by self-justification which eventually leads to self-destruction. I even told you that arrogance is seldom brought up in Sunday’s messages from the local pulpit of your local church. Very few pastors will talk about arrogance. But there are so many illustrations of this particular mental attitude sent in the scripture, beginning with Lucifer himself and demonstrated in the life of many, many Bible characters, all the way from Moses to Peter. But today I want to cover something different, not arrogance. I want to cover a subject called humility. Humility. In 1 Samuel 16, you’ll find the story of God choosing a new leader, which is going to be King David. And he sent Samuel down to the house of Jesse to anoint the new leader. And Samuel was taken away by one of Jesse’s older sons named Eliab. And here’s what happened. This is in 1 Samuel 16, verse seven. The Lord told Samuel, don’t look at his appearance or how tall he is because I have rejected him. God does not see as humans see. A human looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks into the heart. And what happened is Samuel, when he came and saw Eliab, he was taken away and he said, surely the Lord’s presence must be with this man. This man had no humility. He thought he should be the future king of Israel. He was the older of the brothers and certainly not David, the young sheep keeper. But no humility. And remember that David, when David fought Goliath the giant, there was no humility there either because he laughed at David. He scorned David. He cursed him by his gods and said, I’ll kill you right here today and laugh at you. No humility. I want to talk to you about the importance of humility. But first of all, we have to understand humility is not inherited. It’s acquired. And how do you acquire humility? Well, it starts in the home with a child learning to accept the authority of their parents. I’ve raised four children. I know this is a battle. It certainly is. But Ephesians 6, 1 through 4, Paul’s writing talks about teaching children, obey your parents. Honor your father and your mother. Two words there, obey and honor. Obey is a military term called hupotasso in the Greek New Testament. It means to about face, forward march, pay attention, do it, do it, do it. Children are to obey their parents. And I had a kid one time say, if you knew my parents, you wouldn’t say that. Maybe so, but we’ll talk about that here in a minute. Honor your father and your mother. Notice they’re not parents anymore. They’re father and mother. They’re separated. Maybe they get a divorce. You still have to honor your father and your mother, which means to respect them. So the principle is this, that unless a child at a young age learns to be submissive to legitimate authority in life, then they will be ill-equipped to handle real, true life when they grow up. In the book that I wrote called These Things, I discussed how Peter was humbled by our Lord, who actually told him that before the rooster crows in the morning three times, you’re going to deny me. Now, Peter had been a little arrogant. In John 13, 38, Jesus answered, will you lay down your life for me? I’m telling you, in the morning before the rooster crows three times, you will have denied me. Ha! Well, what did Peter say that brought that answer from the Lord? Well, here’s what he said. In John 13, 37, Peter said to him, Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for your sake. Well, that was an arrogant statement and the Lord knew that. He needed some humility and he was taught humility here in this passage because he did in fact deny the Lord three times before the rooster crowed the next morning. The lesson to be learned is this, that the Christian life does not operate on emotions. I don’t care how fired up you get, how much you want to lay down your life for the Lord Jesus, your Christian life doesn’t operate on emotions. And so many times we get this unrealistic self-image about who we are. Or sometimes we get depressed about why we’re not what we want to be. But this word humility is a very great virtue in our lives. It’s one of the greatest virtues in the believer’s life. Notice in James 4, 6. Here’s what James wrote. But he, that’s God, gives more grace. Therefore, he says, God resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. He resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. In the Greek New Testament writings, that word resist, he resists the proud. The word proud is a combination of two words, meaning what? Those that draw attention to themselves is what it means. But he gives grace to the humble, and the Greek word for humble is tapinosus. Tapinos is the word, tapinos, and it means this. It’s a metaphor to show someone of a lower status, someone of lowliness of mind. And actually it means someone who has absence of pride in self. So we see the condition here that God is willing to lay out more grace to the humble person. We see this word for humble used of our Lord in Philippians 2, 7 and 8. He was the genuine humble person. Listen carefully. But he, that’s Jesus Christ, made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant and coming in the likeness of a man, And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even to the death on the cross. Now this was the God-man, undiminished deity, true humanity in one body forever. And he humbled himself, he did not use his deity to sustain his humanity. And so he humbled himself and became obedient to his father’s will, which was what? to go to the cross and lay down his life for the sins of the world. In Philippians 2.5, you and I are instructed to have this same humble attitude. As a member of God’s royal family, God expects us to have humility. And the reason is because arrogance fosters an unstable soul, and that usually leads to trouble. But without the spiritual skills to operate with humility, then arrogance in our lives, self-justification, self-deception, self-absorption, arrogance will cloud our thinking, cloud our judgment, and always inevitably cause us to become very self-centered individuals. So we can’t afford to operate under arrogance. We have to operate under humility. That’s what the Bible teaches. But the question is, what is humility? And we’ll get to that. The arrogant Christian is inadequate to operate in the spiritual life since his mental attitude sins are constantly quenching the Holy Spirit with his self-justification and self-deception. But on the other hand, the Christian that has humility, he’s teachable. The arrogant individual is not teachable, but the Christian with humility is teachable because teachability means you have the capacity To do what? To listen, the capacity to learn, and the capacity to respond to authority without feeling inferior. So spiritual humility is what I want you to have. It’s actually a very great strength in your life. It’s not a weakness. Don’t confuse it with humiliation or subjugation. I’m not talking about that. It’s actually a way of thinking as well as a way of living. There are a couple of types of humility taught in the Bible. One is called enforced humility. And this is learned in the home under a stable system of order and discipline administered by the parents as we said earlier, enforced humility. Go to your room, clean up your room, pick up your socks, hang up your clothes. The child doesn’t do it and the parent has to enforce humility. If they don’t have genuine humility, then the parent has to enforce humility. Don’t be like we used to do. I told you, I told you. After you tell it about 10 times, then you get upset and go get mad at them. One twice should be enough, and they don’t do it, then it’s time to enforce humility. Mom and pop are trying to restrain the child’s sin nature because the little sin nature does not want to obey, doesn’t want to humble itself. The little sin nature wants to be arrogant and say, I want my way. I’m not going to do what you want me to do. But parental decisions may not always be fair. Sometimes parents make mistakes. Sometimes parents whip the wrong child for something that didn’t happen. In my home, as my children were growing up, it was always, who did this? And you know who it was? Not me, not me, not me, not me. None of the four would ever admit it. And sometimes we wound up disciplining the wrong child for something that they didn’t actually do. So how do you handle unfair authority? Well, arrogance cannot handle it. Arrogance gets mad, arrogance reacts, arrogance gets bitter. But humility, when you have genuine humility, then you can respond with forgiveness. Emotions react with anger, but humility, which is thinking divine viewpoint, responds with forgiveness. So when you fail to orient to legitimate authority, it’s always going to mean trouble down the road, and especially true for a young person. But genuine humility, that’s true humility, comes when a person is self-motivated. That means when they have positive volition. They’re willing to accept authority and they’re willing to accept instruction. Thus the person with genuine humility has a relaxed mental attitude as well as poise, which is the ability to think under pressure, and courage. You think about a recruit going into the military and that’s the first thing they teach them, humility. They may have come out of civilian life thinking they’re God’s gift to the women or God’s gift to the men or God’s gift to everybody. but they have to learn to have some humility to that drill sergeant. They have to learn how to handle authority, and authority’s not always fair. And here’s a sign you don’t have humility. If you cannot handle unfair authority, if you get mad, if you get bitter, if you get angry, when someone in authority over you makes a decision that you don’t like, then you have no humility. You’re not able to handle that kind of thing. That’s what biblical humility does. Biblical humility gives you the ability to handle unfair treatment. In Proverbs 22 verse four, but humility or by humility and the respect of the Lord are riches and honor and life. Three things you want, I’m sure, riches, honor, and life. And how do you get it? By having an attitude of humility and respecting the Lord. That means respect his word. In Colossians 3.12, the Bible says, therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, the Lord Jesus Christ was the beloved one, and if you’re in Christ, you’re beloved. So Paul wrote, put on the tender mercies, kindness, put on tender mercies. And what else? Kindness. And then what else? Humility. And what else did he talk about? Put on kindness and humility and meekness and long suffering. Those words describe the personality profile of the mature believer. kindness, humility, meekness, and long-suffering. There is your personality profile as a mature believer. That’s what you’re supposed to have. You’re supposed to have these tender mercies of kindness, humility, meekness, and long-suffering, Colossians 3.12. That’s a whole message I could teach you right there. In 1 Peter 5.6, the Bible says this. Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God. so that he may exalt you in due time. How do you do that? Humility is obedience, just as it is in the home with a child. To humble yourself before God is to obey God. And if you obey God, he will promote you in due time. He will exalt you in due time. But there can be no blessing, there can be no promotion from God if you have no humility. Because respect for God’s word and obedience motivated by personal love for God is what brings this blessing. Do you hear me? Respect for God’s word and obedience motivated by personal love for God is what brings this blessing. So humility is the motivation for impersonal love. Impersonal love is problem-solving device number seven in the flatline of your soul. If you don’t have humility, you cannot use impersonal love with people that you don’t like. Do nothing, Philippians 2, 3 says, do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind. Regard one another as more important than yourself. So if you want to use impersonal love, the first thing you have to understand is the person that you don’t like person that raises their hair on the back of your neck that’s the person you have to deem is more important than yourself you can’t be conceited can’t be selfish with impersonal love impersonal love is you loving them based on your character not their character your character maybe they’re not nice maybe they’re not clean maybe they’re not pretty but you love them Same way God loved you, God so loved the world, that was you. He loved you when you were unclean in sin, and yet you can love anybody if you use problem-solving device number seven. And the only way you can use it is to have the mindset of humility. So how do you get humility? How do you acquire it? Well, here it is, three points. One, reception. You have to hear the word of God taught and you have to apply the scriptures that are taught to you. Listening and learning and implying. The Bible uses a couple of words. One word is called in the Greek New Testament, G-N-O-S-I-S, gnosis. And that’s knowledge you understand, knowledge you comprehend. And this is what you may get on Sunday morning from your pastor. If you listen to him teach, you get gnosis. But it has to become, the Bible says, epi-gnosis. There’s a preposition, epi, E-P-I, which means full knowledge. And then the word gnosis or knowledge. Excuse me. And then the word gnosis or knowledge. And so as you learn God’s word, Not only do you have to hear it, but you have to apply it. That’s why the Lord Jesus Christ said, happiness belongs to those who hear my Father’s word and keep it. So there can be no blessing without humility. You have to receive the teaching of the word of God and apply the teaching into your life to acquire the mindset of Christ. So knowledge, gnosis, has to be more than academic knowledge. It has to be metabolized once you hear it and once it’s taught to you. It has to be metabolized into your soul and applied into your soul and become epinosis, the Greek word epinosis. So that’s how we start acquiring humility is by reception. But then there’s retention. And this is you retaining what you’ve learned. And not letting the rate of forgetting exceed the rate of learning. It’s easy to do. You can forget stuff. So you have to write it down. Take notes. Look at your notes. Study your notes. Sometimes the preacher may teach the same thing twice. It’s called repetition. That’s okay. You need the repetition. I need the repetition. My pastor used to say, repetition, repetition, repetition. What do you think the recruit in the army does when he goes to learn how to march? Repetition. Forward march, bowed face, tension. You have to teach him how to do it in his sleep. And that’s the same thing with you and I. We receive and we retain that information. And we recall that information. That’s the last R. Reception, retention, and recall. Once we recall the scripture that we’ve learned, then we can apply it to the experience in our life. And that’s where humility comes from. From applying the scriptures in your life that I’ve given you even today. So you got it? You receive the word of God, retain the word of God, and recall the word of God. And my recall, you’re going to use a faithless drill, standing on the promises of God, and you’re going to have a relaxed mental attitude when you do it. So humility always responds with understanding and with forgiveness, whereas arrogance always reacts with bitterness and resentfulness. So if you have genuine humility, you no longer feel threatened. You no longer have self-pity. You no longer make an issue of yourself being hypersensitive. You’re totally relaxed, and this is the most comfortable possible status quo until you finally advance to God’s perfect happiness, which is problem solving device number nine, sharing the happiness of God. So make a note of this. Humility is a Christian virtue. It’s not a form of arrogant hypocrisy. It’s a Christian virtue. It’s the very core of integrity and virtue in the believer’s life, humility. It’s a system of thinking, and it has a lot of synonyms like poise and courage and et cetera. But if you and I have genuine humility, then we can think under unfair situations, not react. Let me give you a couple of illustrations that I ran into in my many years of traveling. Many years ago, I was speaking in a school in Centerville Academy in Centerville, Mississippi. There was a young man named Bobby who had come out of St. Francisville Public Schools to this private school at Centerville Academy. The teacher asked him to read something in class as a new student, and he would not do it. And she asked him again to read, and he said, I’m not reading anything. So she wound up sending him to the headmaster’s office, Mr. Lloyd Lindsey, who’s now with the Lord. And he goes up there, and Mr. Lindsey said, what’s the problem, Bobby? And he said, I’m not reading anything. And, of course, Lloyd read him the riot act and said, maybe you did that in the other school, but here, when the teacher tells you to read, you’re going to read. And Bobby said, I’m not reading anything. I’m not going to read. And so Lloyd said, well, then you can just bend over to the desk there, and I have the Board of Education. We will apply it to your hiney. And he gave him two or three licks, and he said, now you get on back down there, and you read like the teacher told you. And Bobby said, I’m not reading anything. They had him bend over again, a few more licks. By that time, tears were coming out of Bobby’s eyes. And when Lloyd said, now get down there and read like I told you to do, and he said, I’m not reading because I never learned how to read. And when Mr. Lindsey realized he’d whipped a kid that did nothing wrong, that he had whipped a kid because the kid didn’t know how to read, he felt horrible. What would you have done if that was you? Would you have sued him? You think he’d have went and got his dad and said, my dad’s going to come up here and beat your brains out. You can’t do that to me. He didn’t. He kept his mouth shut and he took it. He handled it with humility. He went on to graduate and went on to get a football scholarship to a major university. And he went on to learn how to read there at Centerville Academy. Another illustration that I think about quite often is the illustration of Coach Bum Phillips that I heard many years ago from a friend of mine. I understood what the friend said. While Bum was a high school coach in Beaumont, Texas, he overheard some kids cursing a teacher in the hall. And he went down to where the kids were and grabbed one of them by the back of the neck and said, get down to my office, son. We’re going to settle this. You’re not going to talk like that in my school. And he took him down to the office and he wore his britches out and said, now you get on back to class and don’t ever let me hear you say anything like that again about a teacher. And he was cursing that teacher and running that teacher down. At a class reunion 10 years later, The kid that came up to the coach and said, do you remember 10 years ago when you whipped so-and-so for cussing that teacher in the hall? And Coach Phillips said, yeah, I remember that. Taught him a lesson. He said, no, sir, you didn’t teach him anything. He said, what do you mean I didn’t teach him anything? He said, well, you whipped the wrong one, Coach. It was me, not him. And when Bob heard that, he went and found that kid that he’d whipped and apologized. You know what the kid said? Coach Phillips said, you should have told me. I was so angry. I was so mad hearing you curse that teacher in the hall. He said, don’t worry about it, coach. I just kept my mouth shut and took it. No big deal. That was a humility, a wonderful humility that that student had. How about you? What would you have done? Would you have gotten mad? Would you have gotten angry? Would you have wanted to fight? Would you have wanted to sue? Humility has the ability to think under pressure, not get emotional, but to respond with forgiveness. In both of these illustrations, Bobby and the kid that Coach Phillips whipped, they forgave the coach, they forgave Mr. Lindsey for what he did. Can you forgive those who treated you unfairly? Do you have enough humility to use impersonal love and forgive an individual? Listen to Proverbs 11 too. When arrogance comes, then comes dishonor. But with humility is wisdom. The only basis for having wisdom is life is through humility. I want to read it to you one more time. When arrogance comes, self-justification, self-deception, self-absorption, then comes dishonor. But with humility, there’s wisdom. That’s discernment, that’s understanding. And the only way to get humility is through the acquisition of the word of God in your soul. Again, in Proverbs 29, 23, a person’s arrogance will destroy him, bring him low, but a spirit of humility will attain honor. I would like to ask you today if you have a spirit of humility. Do you have the ability to forgive people when they make mistakes, especially people that are in authority over you? They want you to do something you don’t want to do. They accuse you of doing something you didn’t do. How do you handle that? Do you have enough humility to respond with forgiveness and not react with bitterness? If you stay filled with the Holy Spirit, using 1 John 1-9 to confess any known sin, then you can allow the power of the Holy Spirit to engage your thinking and give you the relaxed mental attitude you need to handle any sort of pressure you come under. Not laughing about things, but humility. Humility, wisdom, not getting mad, not getting angry, not resenting, but forgiving. You can’t have humility if you can’t think. You gotta be able to think. That’s why the scriptures talk about, think about these things. Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are right, think about these things. The Christian life is built on you thinking. I hope you’re understanding this. Humility is a system of thinking. It comes from the input of the Word of God in your soul. All right. Well, this is Rick Hughes. This is your host saying thank you now for listening to The Flatline. I hope you’ll be back next week, same time, same place. Until then, I pray God would richly bless you.
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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.
