Words of Jesus Podcast - A Gift to Modern Man

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

This podcast refers to the, “The Words of Jesus” book, as recorded in the Authorized, King James Version of the Holy Bible. Arranged and chronicled by Gilbert James Brett; Edited by Melbourne I. Feltman, PhD; Comprising the words of Jesus with authoritative adaptations of the Bible text of which they are a part; Consolidated Book Publishers, 153 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago; Copyright 1943 – the John A. Dickson Publishing Co. For your reference and convenience, each podcast episode will include the chapter text from the book which is referenced in the specific episode.  It is useful to recall that in the days Jesus ministered in the flesh, the Scriptures were not readily available to the general public; indeed literacy was not a common attribute.  Scriptures were copied with diligence by the Essenes.  The Scriptures were read in the Synagogues.The abundance of Bibles in our day has diminished the value placed on the Scriptures.  The record of the gospel and its wide availability came at a great cost. Check out the end of the lives of those involved in this endeavor.  Most were martyred for their trouble.  We should consider why they were willing to pay such a price to make the Scriptures available for us today.  They are a gift from God.  *** Chapter 7: JESUS' WORDS TO NICODEMUSOne night a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, came to Jesus and said: "Master, we know that thou art a teacher come from God; for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him." Jesus answered: "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, 'Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Perplexed by the answer, Nicodemus asked: "How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born? Jesus replied: "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, 'Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God'. That which is born of flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, 'Ye must be born again.' The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth. So is everyone that is born of the Spirit.'" Nicodemus asked: "How can these things be?" Jesus answered: "Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, 'We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness.' If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things? And no man hath ascended up to Heaven, but he that came down from Heaven, even the Son of man which is in Heaven. "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. "He that believeth on him is not condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God."

Think Red Ink Ministries presents The Words of Jesus Series with Don C. Harris Hello my friend and welcome once again to the Words of Jesus series. I'm Don Harris, your host, and I am pleased. I'm having a ball going through the words of Jesus with you. And I really love for the red words in the scriptures to be so familiar to you that naturally when you come to a point in your life when you are looking for direction or you're just wondering what would Jesus do

that you can indeed think red ink. That's what we're all about at Think Red Ink Ministries. I'd love for you to visit our website thinkredink.com and whatever materials you see there or anything we can help you with, will you let me know? I would love to hear from you. You can write me at info at thinkredink.com. You can write to me personally, Don, at thinkredink.com. Love to hear from you. We are into chapter seven of the little book called The Words of Jesus. And those of you that are wondering what the little book is, it

simply takes the red words from the scriptures and has just shown us what Jesus actually said while He was here on the earth. The translation is dubious. I don't know. They claim that it's King James, but I happen to know that it's not. I don't know why they do that, but they do. It's close enough to King James to keep me happy anyway.

I happen to like the King James Bible. I don't really feel any threat about reading the King James. Some people do. I encourage people to learn how to read the King James Bible, to learn the Elizabethan English, because, well well it's just been in my experience and what textual criticisms that I have involved myself in, in different translations and such, I really appreciate the King James Bible. I have other favorites, I hate to even mention them because some people feel like that they're awful, heretical Bibles, but they are extremely

accurate. And so I happen to appreciate them. But the King James is one that I grew up with. And it's the one that I read first of all. Another complaint that happens from time to time is people say, he doesn't give references when he quotes the scripture. Well, you know, there's a couple of reasons for that. One of them is I despise the idea of Bible teachers and such who

give references for the express purpose of proving a point. It says it in 2nd Opinions 13.1. That's the end all and be all. If there's a reference to it then somehow it's true. No, it's true because it is true. It's false because it is false. We just need to have that kind of discernment. It doesn't matter what scriptures you're reading. I don't care what translation you want to read or whatever else.

As long as you're spending time before the Lord, you're keeping His commandments. You're not disobeying His conscience. You're not in any trouble. You're not going to find yourself having gone astray because somebody translated the scriptures in some way that doesn't agree with 65% of the theologians out there. Who really cares? I mean, when it comes down to it, the Lord God speaks to us in our own language within our own soul and it comes up from inside. That language

is just pure. And that's why the Bible says every word of God is pure. That's why it says that. It's not talking about this book. It's talking about the words of God. Every word of God is pure. It's unadulterated. You can't spell it wrong. And I encourage people to have a relationship with God just like that. And nothing short of that. We don't need to be scouring through our Bibles trying to find out what we believe.

It doesn't really serve anything other than make us really good arguers in Sunday school. So, you know, let's relax and enjoy ourselves. The other reason that I don't give references is because you ought to know it. When I say something that the Bible says, you should say, you know what, I remember reading that. This is not a soundbite theology. This is not pulling a scripture here and a scripture from there and what we memorized in Sunday school and what we stood up in front of the church and recited and got

our little ribbons for or our little sword drills or whatever else we do as we're growing up and growing through Christianity. But the Scriptures ought to be something that you're familiar with in a most intimate way. I shouldn't be able to tell you anything that the Bible says that you haven't read before. So, okay. There's a couple of reasons why I don't like to give references. I don't know, it's just

got a nasty air to it somehow. Can you tell? I've been around some pretty dogmatic preachers in my life and I just I don't know. It's just something that doesn't sit right with me. See, just something you're going to have to put up with. Alright, in the 7th chapter we find that this is the encounter that Jesus and Nicodemus had. One night a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, came to Jesus

and said, Jesus answered, Well, I thank you, Nicodemus, and you're a wonderful man, too. May I shake your hand? Oh, see, he didn't say that, did he? Isn't it odd that this greeting from Nicodemus was, you know, you're a wonderful man from God. I can see him with his paw stuck out there and doing a little glad hand and job with Jesus, you know, and wanting to tell him, you know, I'm your friend

and I appreciate what you're doing. And Jesus, he doesn't even acknowledge this compliment. He doesn't acknowledge that, well, I'm so happy for you, Nicodemus, that you believe in me and that you care about the things of God or that, you know, that's very discerning of you or anything. He didn't say anything to him except, hey, barely, barely I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

I'm thinking, alright, right to the point. Here we go. But this is not a piece of script that got burned or torn out or anything. This is exactly the way this conversation took place. And here you have Nicodemus wanting to be buddies, and Jesus is saying, let's get down to business. I know why you're here. I know what's on your mind. Do you know that the term born again

is not necessarily a Christian term? This was well known by the Jews. They had their term born again. They had their criteria by which it comes about in a person's life. They had evidences that they would impose, imply, test people by or whatever to determine whether or not a person was born again. Matter of fact, I think the Jewish term was born from above. But it was always

in question. There was a group of people we know them as Essenes that were irrevocably dedicated to copying out and preserving Scripture. You probably remember or are familiar with the term or the description of the Dead Sea Scrolls. These were found in a cave at Qumran in what

they have decided was a scriptorium. A scriptorium is a place where scribes would copy out the Scriptures and a lot of these scriptures were placed into jars and kept and sealed and this is what was found by the little Bedouin shepherd boy. Do you realize that that is a contemporary event that happened essentially in our lifetimes? What was it, 1948? And because

we have the Dead Sea Scrolls, we found that a whole lot of our scriptures are extremely accurate. Extremely accurate. And it was really a wonderful find. I happen to believe that the scriptures are a gift to our modern man. If you think about it, the people who worship their Bibles and

who feel like salvation comes by a familiarity with words on a page. It has a fatal flaw in that particular philosophy and that is that the written documents although there are written documents that are thousands of years old there weren't many people that had copies of the scriptures. And as I told you

before it was Jesus' habit because he didn't own a Bible. He used to go down to the town hall, what they call a synagogue and on the Sabbath day that's one thing that they would do. They would pull out the scrolls of the scriptures and they would read them and they weren't reading for rhetoric, they weren't reading for practice, they weren't even reading in order to memorize. They were reading as a service to people who, number one,

couldn't read if they had a scroll, and number two, most people didn't have scrolls. And so the idea of everybody having a Bible, much less in our day where everybody has six or eight of them, I mean they're color coordinated to the clothes we wear at a church. But there was a time when they just were not available as they are today. The Essenes

were a group of Pharisees that were dedicated to copying out the Scriptures and to have a record, an accurate record of the Scriptures. And scribes were it's a very interesting science. If you look into it you'll find that even today we have in computer, dealing with computer languages, we have what's called

checksums. And this is where a computer will check to see if a certain line of programming, if its checksum doesn't line up with the checksum that's assigned to it, it throws it out saying that there's a flaw in it somewhere. They actually had those kinds of safeguards involved, and I'm talking about the Essenes now, I'm talking about scripture translation when that's really not my

subject. But it is an interesting science if you look at it. There was great pains taken to make sure that these scriptures were copied accurately by the counting of letters and even the values of letters and counting across and counting down and counting these. It wasn't just somebody sitting there reading and somebody else writing or somebody just looking at a

word and then writing it and looking at the next word and writing it. It was very important to them to make sure these things were accurate. Well one other thing that the Essenes were famous for doing, one of the things that they practiced was that should you want to be a part of their group, you wanted to be a part of their church so to speak they had certain criteria that they essentially checked people by

and one of the things that they did that I wish to goodness that people that have groups of religious people today would practice and that is they put you on probation for two years. They wanted to see what your level of dedication was. Remember when they'd wander out to the Jordan River and ask John to baptize them? What did John tell them to do?

He said, go home and bring forth therefore fruits, meat for repentance. Old English again. But what he's saying is, I want to see repentance in your life so that when you come here to be baptized, it's not in question whether or not you have actually repented. Well, the Essenes made that

two years time. You read different things different places. It was not a matter of just slipping your hand up and coming up in front of the church and having everybody vote on you. No, it was a matter of two years time. They were not under the impression that people were instantaneously born again instantaneously regenerated, instantaneously

saved and therefore because you were saved then now you can be baptized into a church. They didn't have that idea at all. That came along when we were all trying to build churches and build one larger than the one next door. So Nicodemus was familiar with the term being born again however it was very

ill-defined in those days. Jesus came straight to the point when Nicodemus was there it was obvious that that is what he came to talk to Jesus about. And the conversation continues that Nicodemus was sort of an antagonist against the idea of being born again. Because he was saying to Jesus

how can this be so? Can a man enter his mother's womb and be born again? Well he wasn't really asking that. He knew better than that. He was just what he was doing was he was taking their discussion, their argument, so to speak, and throwing it into what's called the ad absurdum argument. And I find this a lot with Bible arguers and Bible worshipers. They would say and here's the way you know you're being led in that direction. And that's when somebody says, so what you're telling me is

now they're about to take a principle, an idea, a doctrine and they're about to throw it into an absurdity that makes what you're saying an impossibility. You've seen this? It happens all the time. I'll tell you, there are a lot of people who, as they read the Scriptures, they realize, you know, I think the Lord wants us to keep the Sabbath day. I don't see anywhere in here where Sunday has replaced the Sabbath day. So they want to please God, they want to do what's

right, so they say, I think I need to start keeping the Sabbath. Well, that's fine until you tell somebody that that's what you want to do. Two things will happen. You will be descended upon by every kooky Sabbath day keeping person on the face of the planet wanting to pull you into their particular denomination or faith or group or whatever else. But the other thing that will happen is that your Christian

friends will take your decision, which is a good and wholesome and right decision, by the way, but they will take it and throw it into the ad absurdum argument. They'll say, oh, so you're going to start keeping the Sabbath day, so I guess you're going to start sacrificing animals now too, huh? And you think, wow, man, how did we get from obeying the Lord in a simple thing like not working on Saturday

to sacrificing animals? Well, what this is is when people make an argument into absurdity so that they don't have to do whatever it is that's been revealed to them to do. Isn't that sad? But unfortunately it happens all the time. We're going to find it happens here. Jesus says,

Verily I say unto you, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Perplexed by the answer, he wasn't perplexed. Nicodemus asked, How can a man be born again when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb and be born again when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb and be born?

This is a prime example of this ad absurdum argument. Jesus answered, Verily I say unto you, except he be born again, except he be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of flesh is flesh, and that which is born of Spirit is Spirit. Marvel not that I say unto thee, you must be born again.

Let me take a moment here and show you you will undoubtedly encounter, if you haven't already, people who will tell you that you must be baptized in water to be saved. They make no bones about it. They'll tell you just that way. And they'll quote what is it, Acts 2.38

that you have to be baptized in order to be saved, be baptized and be saved. And there are people who will take this particular conversation where Jesus says, you have to be born of the water and of the Spirit in order to see the kingdom of God. And they say, see there? There it is. Now, I don't know. Before you point at this and say that's what this is saying, I think that if you

read this as it's written, I think that it'll become apparent to you that Jesus is talking about the two births. Not the one birth of being born again, but the two births. There's also a lot of symbolism in what he's saying here that will help us. He says, I say unto you, except a man be born of

the water and of the Spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Then he says, he is there's a rule, not a rule, but there's a practice in Jewish prose. Instead of saying something is really, really, really, really important, they will say what they're trying to say in one way, and then they will say it again in another way. They reiterate what they have said, reiterating it in different words, which brings

more attention to what they're saying. When he says, except a man be born of the water, he's saying born of the flesh. And then he says and of the spirit, then he says that which is born of the spirit is spirit. I'll read it all together so you can see what I'm talking about here. Because Nicodemus has brought in the

fleshly birth and saying that once a man is born and then he is old, how can he be born again? That's an impossibility. Jesus is being kind to him because I don't think Nicodemus was bewildered at all. I think that he was trying to make an argument against the idea of being born again. That for Nicodemus it was

I obey the laws, I do what God says, therefore I'm entering the kingdom of heaven. Which Jesus would not argue with, but that's not all Jesus came to do. If all Jesus came to do was to get us into the kingdom of God, all he's got to do, well shoot! Let's face facts. The regenerative part of our Christian experience is what Jesus came

to do. We had the law for 3,500 years. We had the ability to enter the kingdom of heaven. Jesus told the rich young ruler, do you want to have eternal life do you want to enter the kingdom of heaven keep the law he says well I've been doing this since I was a kid I've been doing this all my life he says this do and thou shalt live so if the law had that ability to grant us life inside the kingdom of God,

then what was Jesus doing here? Well, the little guy who was asking him the question made it very clear that, look, I know. This is the way I've been living. I know. I get it. I understand. This is what I've done. But what lack I yet? When you keep the law of God, you open up a communication between you and God,

and he's able to expose yourself to yourself. And if anybody sees themselves in that way, there's a feeling of desperation that comes over us. Has it ever come over you? Have you ever wondered how in the world am I going to quit being the way I am? How am I going to get control of my life? How am I going to get control of my mind? How am I going to do this? Well, Jesus is saying there's such a thing as being born again.

Nicodemus brought the flesh part up. And Jesus says, no, being born of the water or being born of the flesh. I think he's talking about ambionic fluid, to tell you the truth. I think that it's descriptive of being born of the Spirit, to be baptized in that Spirit, to be in the fluid and the fluid in you, to be in the Spirit and the Spirit in you. This is being baptized in the Spirit of God. And he says, when a person does that, now we're talking about somebody who's being born of the Spirit of God. It's exciting, isn't it? Our time's gone.

We want you to join us here next time. We're going to hear more of the words of Jesus. We want to hear from you. Let me give you my email address. Send an email to don at thinkredinc.com Or you can write to Think Red Ink Ministries, mailbox 718, Pytown, New Mexico, 87827.

All right, we'll see you next time. Bye-bye. you've been listening to don c harris of think red ink ministries ThinkRedInc.com. That's ThinkRedInc.com. Join us again for the next episode in the Words of Jesus series. you