Words of Jesus Podcast - All Men Have Sinned

Episode Date: March 29, 2024

When we repent we make changes in our life. If no change occurs, we remain in our sin. We are not condemned because of Adam. We will be judged based on what we do; not what we believe. What we believe will determine our actions. Sin is a transgression against the law. Jesus says, "Go and sin no more." There is a protocol required for relationship with God. We must love God and love our neighbor enough to keep the 10 commandments. The commandments are our guard rails. When we keep the commandments we will be led by the Spirit of God. When you obey your conscience it gets louder. Jesus will teach us HIS ways - from the inside. Listen. ***68: Jesus Teaches Concerning RepentanceLuke 13:1-9All Men Are SinnersSome of the crowd told Jesus of the Galileans who had been killed by Pilate and whose blood had been mingled with their sacrifices. Jesus said:             “Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, ‘Nay,’ but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, ‘Nay,’ but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” Parable Of A Barren Fig Tree            Then Jesus told those who were with him this parable:            “A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none. Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, ‘Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none. Cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?’ And he answering said unto him, ‘Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it. And if it bear fruit, well; and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.”

Think Red Ink Ministries presents The Words of Jesus series with Don C. Harris Hello my friends, I'm Don Harris of Think Red Ink Ministries. Glad to have you again on the Words of Jesus series. Our goal here is just to reinforce Christianity with the wisdom and words of Jesus, which have been neglected in our past. I don't know how we got into the mess that we're in. I don't know how the words of jesus and what he has to say

are are found to be so contrary to what we actually say every day what we believe what we hope for um our modern doctrines have done some well some pretty devastating things to the to the first century christian Christianity that was once delivered to us. Jesus really didn't come to establish a church on the earth. He came to build the church that already existed. The church has always been Israel. And it may not be what you're thinking. Just wait just a second. Let me explain something.

Israel was a name that was given to Jacob, and it was given to him because, the Bible says, that he strove with God. He wrestled with God. Now, friends, that is what we are supposed to be doing. And people who are seeking a relationship with God are in that church. The church that has always been here. There's no such thing as replacement theology. God didn't replace the Jews with the Gentiles. That's really kind of silly thinking. He's really not into DNA anymore. He's not really into bloodline salvation. It's one of the things that Jesus actually eradicated when he was here on the earth. You remember when the

disciples were arrested and the accusations that were brought against him were very much like the accusations that were brought against Jesus Christ, that he was an insurrectionist. Not only, they tried to say he was an insurrectionist against Rome in order to get Rome's ire up to the point that they would kill him. But they couldn't find that in him. They couldn't find him fighting politically. They couldn't find him, they couldn't hear anything that he said, anything against Caesar. So what exactly was going on there?

What were they trying to do? Well his insurrection was against the so-called church, the religious leadership of the day. Have you ever considered that Jesus really never had anything good to say about the so-called church on the earth when he got here? It all had to change. That message was put into the mouth of John the Baptist, which is the root understanding of the word repentance,

that we had to repent. We had to change. Things are about to change. They are not going to be like they've always been. Well, here we are again with a church that is absolutely impotent, that has no idea about the God they serve. They say they love him. They don't do what he says. And we are in that time again in need of a prophet. And there's not going to be one. But we are indeed in need of a prophet that says repent. When the rich man was speaking to Abraham over the gulf that was fixed between his

torment and the comfort of Lazarus. He spoke to him and said, perhaps you could get Lazarus to go back and tell my brethren so that they don't come to this horrible place. And what was Abraham's answer? They have and tell my brethren so that they don't come to this horrible place. And what was Abraham's answer? They have, who has? His brothers have.

Everyone has. You have. I have. Just to show you how things have just not changed that much from the requirements that the Lord has always made of us. What did Abraham say? Well, they have churches, they have preachers, they have a Bible, they have doctrines, they have denominations.

They'll be okay. No, he never mentioned them. He says they have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear them. And friend, that is where you are, it's where I am, it's where all of us are, whether we like it or whether we don't. Whether it fits in our denominational scheme of things. Many Protestant denominations have real trouble sending people toward Moses and toward the law.

But that's exactly what Jesus did. He said that, made it very clear that we have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear them. Paul reinforces this idea in the New Testament saying that the law was given to us as a schoolmaster. What is a schoolmaster? Is a schoolmaster a guide? Not really. What is a schoolmaster? guide not really is a what is a schoolmaster he lays down a dogmatic understanding of doctrine these are things that have to be learned and taught these are facts these are this

this is what you have to do and so this schoolmaster law actually it accomplishes so many things when you decide to keep the law the first thing that will occur to you is oh my goodness i don't know it and i meet a lot of people that you know their attitude about christianity going to church and being saved and being whatever uh is thwarted by their idea, their concept. Actually, it comes from inside them. They don't even really even understand what they're saying when they say, well, I just think we ought to keep the Ten Commandments and we'll be okay. There is some truth in that.esus taught the the rich young ruler he said uh you want to enter into eternal life he said yes he said well keep the commandments well you might say that you know well that's not

what he meant well you're going to have trouble with the next few verses because the young man says well i've done that's from my youth j Jesus didn't answer him saying, well, that's not good enough. No, he didn't say that. Well, you also have to, no, he didn't say that. He said, good, this do and thou shalt live. There's not much changed as far as what God expects us to do. And you're going to find what God expects you to do in the commandments. As soon as you decide to do that, as I said, you will run into the fact that

you don't know them. An example I was giving, you know, I meet a man and he says, well, I think if we just keep the commandments, I think we'll be okay. Really? That's the way you live? Yeah, that's the way I live. So these 10 commandments, what are they? Well, you know. Yes, I know. But do you know? You're telling me you live by a code that you can't even quote? You live by rules that you don't, you're not even familiar with? Can you, can you tell me what the commandments are? Well, you know what they are. You know, that murdering thing and adultery thing. Well, there's two.

How are we doing? And it's embarrassing for people because they've come up with little trite answers and little comments and, you know, things that they've said over and over again. No one's ever challenged them on it because God forbid that we should ever judge another man, right? There's some truth in that,

but there's also truth in judgment being a great part of discernment. And if you do care about somebody, you do care about how they feel about eternity and how they feel like they're going to enter eternity you know in good standing with god and i'm always amazed when i hear people say keep the commandments and they don't even know what they are i'm also amazed by people who believe that they that oh yeah the commandments are still in force, except one. So it's nine commandments now? Really? Is there any other commandment we can erase?

Is there anything else that we can decide that Jesus fulfilled this for me? I can commit murder now because Jesus fulfilled the commandments? Nobody talks that silly. The reason they don't is because there is something in them. There is a light within every man. The Bible says that there is a light that lights every man that comes into the world. And when we do come into the world, we have an innate understanding of what's right and what's wrong that feeling will not let you enter eternity in good standing with god but it will lead you where you need to go you know that there's a right thing to do then do it

paul says that thing in us that supposedly guides us and leads us, he says, it's imperfect. Because there's certain things that we just don't know. He says, I never knew that it was wrong to covet another man's goods, except that the commandment said, thou shalt not covet. I didn't know that before. So there are some things in the law, Sabbath is another one. You know, people want to keep the sabbath day and first thing that they say the people who keep sunday as sabbath will say well

we really don't know what day sabbath is you know what i guess they're right the trees don't turn a different color on sabbath day the birds don't quit tweeting on sabbath. There's nothing in nature to say what day is the Sabbath day. So the commandment itself that says keep the Sabbath day is there for a reason. And, by the way, one of the longest commandments in the ten. It not only tells you what to do, it tells you when to do it and why it is done. And it's one of the most ignored commandments there are. And people say, well, we don't know what day the Sabbath is. You know, we talk about this a lot because it's a point of contention between Think Red

Inc. Ministries and most other ministries that don't feel like the Sabbath is important or that it's changed to Sunday, you know, according to, you know, the Pope's decree. And so in talking about this, people will say, you know, what day is the Sabbath? Well, it's the seventh day of the week. Well, who's to say what's the seventh day of the week? Well, there's a lot of study that you can put into this and find out that we do indeed know what day. We may not know the seventh day in numerical order all the way back to creation, but you know, we have history and we have documents and we have, it's simple to prove that the order of the days has not changed. We as Christians, I don't know how the Jews do it with any accuracy, because if you don't believe in Christ and you don't believe he was the Son of

God, he doesn't really stand as some kind of an authority on this. But we as Christians, because we believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, we know that he kept the Sabbath day. Now friend, that was only 2,000 years ago. That doesn't have to go all the way back to creation. We know that there is a numerical order, an unbroken numerical order of the days, the number of the days of the week, even with the calendar changes from Julian to Gregorian and all the other stuff that you're going to find if you start looking into this, even though the numbers

and perhaps the names of the months and these kind of things have changed over time the order of the of the numerical order of of sabbaths in seven day segments is absolutely recordable it's absolutely visible to anyone who takes a look at it so we do know what day the sabbath is we have a commandment in in our in our in our tin that says to keep that sabbath day and i'd really like to know what's so difficult about that i don't know why that's a sticking point but it is and um so we have people that are you know they have good intention toward god and they they want to meet on friendly terms. And so in order to avoid church and that kind of thing, a lot of people like to avoid church. Frankly, I have a hard time blaming them in some situations. But

in order to avoid their responsibility to whatever they seem to feel is distasteful, they will defer to the commandments but they don't keep them it's it's amazing how many times this shows up that god and and his way and his will in our life and christianity in general just kind of turns out to be a hobby a smorgasbord kind of a hobby that we don't like this rule, we like that rule, and we're going to make new rules or ignore certain rules. And there's no future in this.

Where is the future? Where is our future, our good future before God? Friend, it is in repentance. It always has been. It's what John preached. It's what has been. It's what John preached. It's what Jesus preached. It's what Paul preached. And Peter and all the rest of the apostles, they all taught repentance.

And what is that? It's change. We're going to have to make changes in our life. And sometimes that's distasteful. Sometimes that's not a lot of fun. But changes have to be made. You're in no condition to stand before God. I don't care what your faith is. I don't care what they've told you, whoever has told you. But you know that when you stand before God, some people even say that Christians aren't ever going to stand judgment.

Some people who talk about the judgment of Christians will add to it that when God looks at you, he's going to see Jesus. Well, I'm sorry, friend, you're off on a lot of your doctrinal ideas. First of all, Jesus is not your adversary, I'm sorry, your advocate in court with God. God is not your judge. Did you know that? The Bible says that God has turned all judgment over to the Son. You're going to stand before the Son of God when you stand judgment. He's not going to be your lawyer. He's going to be your judge. And buddy boy, he knows. He knows all things. He knows exactly what's going on. You're not going to fool him one way or the other. Hey, how do we get out of this mess alive? How do we fix this? Repentance. Just repentance. That's what makes the difference. Jesus is going to talk

about repentance here. We are in the 68th chapter of our book, and we read from there. I told you, I love this little book called The Words of Jesus. It's an old book. I believe it's even out of print. However, I do disagree with many of their subtitles that they put here. And one of them here is in this particular chapter, it says, Jesus teaches concerning repentance. And the subtitle is, All Men Are Sinners. I don't agree with that. All men aren't sinners. Now perhaps we all have sinned but all men aren't sinners. You know I have Jesus' words on this by the way. Do you remember when he says that when one repents the angels in heaven

rejoice as more so than a hundred people. You know the rest of this verse. More than a hundred people who need no repentance. You see, repentance puts us into a particular state of being, which is not a sinner. It is a saint.

And what does that mean? A separated one. We have to separate ourselves from the world and from their ways and from sin in general. We have to separate ourselves. And no matter what you've been told you can live without sin this is why jesus ended a lot of his miracles by speaking to the person who was the the benefactor of his miracle go and sin no more this is why we need to live this way If you subscribe to the idea that every thought that you think that's not

perfect or kind or sweet or lovely or whatever is a sin, you're going to have a difficult time not being a sinner. But the Bible teaches that a sin is a transgression against the law. And nowhere in the law does it say that if you have an evil thought, which is what a lot of people say, you have an evil thought that you've committed a sin against God. No, your evil thought is your opportunity to choose the right way. That's all it is. We're going to have evil thoughts as long as we're in this flesh. We're going to have evil thoughts as long as we're in this flesh we're going to have evil thoughts but to say that as long as we're in this flesh that we're going to sin against god i'm afraid you don't have the bible to back you up on that the bible teaches clearly he that is

born of god doth not commit sin for his seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin, because he's born of God. And, you know, in order to rectify a lot of these scriptures, we're just going to have to change our doctrine. We're going to have to change. What did I say change was? It's repentance. Oh my goodness, I've been wrong. I'm not going that way anymore.

I'm going this way. And as soon as you take that first step in that direction, you have repented. As long as you sit and think about it, there is no repentance. You sit around and feel sorry for yourself, sorry about your sins, apologize to God or whatever else you feel like you need to do, you still haven't repented. Repented is to go another direction. Well sounds like a work story and it's salvation it is uh that's i'm afraid we've just been told that it it's all by faith you better hope god doesn't have that attitude hey when you pray to him, you expect him to do something. But he can't expect that of us.

You pray and ask for something, you expect him to do it. Not just believe it, not just feel sorry for us. We don't need him to feel sorry for us. We want him to do something. We make demands of him that we just don't accept his demands of him that he that uh we just don't accept uh his demands of us boy it's just so lopsided and so twisted and so weird it's no wonder that you know people are just absolutely confused that you can tell they're confused you can tell they're confused when they pray when they live when they when they do. I was doing something this morning.

As a matter of fact, this isn't necessarily confession time, but I had an opportunity in this situation to do something that I could have got away with, but I heard in my spirit, that's dishonest. That's not the right way to do this. And so, you know what I do? I agree with that voice. I agree with my conscience and say, that's the wrong thing to do.

You know, you could risk $25 to save $250. And, you know, should I do that? No, that's not honest. Don't need to go into all the details. But it just was a matter of clicking a little box and I could have been $250 to the good. Nobody would have known any difference. I hate to admit this stuff.

But do you struggle with these things? Well, I don't necessarily think that I struggle with them, but boy, I am so pleased that the Spirit of God is in me to say, ah, ah, ah, don't click that. That's the wrong thing to do. That's not honest. And, you know, I could have done it. Do you know what happens?

You start disobeying your conscience. Your conscience is the greatest gift god has ever given you on the face of the planet every person walking on the face of the planet has within them this this little flicker of conscience down in them that says that's not the right thing to do you need to cherish that and friend you thing to do. You need to cherish that. And friend, you need to protect it. You need to protect it so that it's always there. And the next time you need it, it's a little louder and a little louder and a little louder.

Not more and more diminished to the point that, as the apostle says, that we have our consciences seared as with a hot iron. You don't want to get to the point where you don't feel that anymore. So you want to obey it. Well, there's my three points. I constantly try to make you three little steps that will change your entire life for the better.

What are they? Keep the commandments. Never disobey your conscience. Take time every day to hear the voice of God. Alright, Jesus is teaching concerning repentance. We're going to leave off the subtitle, All Men Are Sinners, and read what Jesus had to say. Some of the crowd told Jesus of the Galileans who had been killed by Pilate whose blood had been mingled with their sacrifices. I don't want you to miss

this. These Galileans came to Jerusalem to make sacrifice and they were slaughtered by Pilate. I don't know if we have a lot of facts on what actually was going on here, but it says that their blood was mingled with their sacrifices. These sacrifices were obviously blood sacrifices given at the altar in Jerusalem. And the slaughter was so violent

that as the blood splattered, I know it's kind of disgusting to think about, but as this blood flew in this violent attack, the people who came to offer sacrifices, blood was mingled with the blood on the altar. This was a horrible, horrible thing. Jesus asked them a question.

Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans because they suffered such things? How many times do you get into a situation in life where you feel like you're suffering in a certain situation and your first response is, oh my God, what did I do to deserve this? I can tell you how to eradicate that from your life. I can tell you where you can actually endure all hardship, all problems, everything that happens in your life that is unpleasant, and that thought, what did I do to deserve this,

will never cross your mind. Now, friend, that is a worthwhile thing to know how to do. You know what you need to do? Jesus is going to tell us. He says, do you think that they were sinners above all Galileans because they suffered such things? I tell you, no. But except you repent,

you shall all likewise perish again he says or those 18 upon whom the tower in siloam fell and slew them do you think they were sinners above all that dwelt in Jerusalem? The answers to these questions aren't spoken. But I assure you, in the society in which these people lived, it was indeed a fact in their own minds that when something bad happens to somebody, it's because they have done something or involved themselves in something bad happens to somebody, it's because they have done something or involved themselves in something bad. So the answers to these questions that weren't spoken,

but they were thought was, yes, we do. Jesus says, no, they're not. Uh-oh, we're going to have to change our minds? We're going to have to change our doctrine? Yeah, you are. He's going to continue, and that's what we're going to do next change our minds we're going to have to change our doctrine yeah you are he's going to continue and that's what we're going to do next time our time is gone for now can I ask you to send me your questions

and your comments it's just as simple as sitting down and writing an email to don at thinkredink.com or you can write to Think Red Ink Ministries PO Box 718 Pytown 87827 Think Red Ink Ministries, PO Box 718, Pytown, 87827. Think Red Ink, my friends. Bye-bye. you've been listening to don c harris of Think Red Ink Ministries. Email don at thinkredink.com. That's thinkredink.com.

Join us again for the next episode in the Words of Jesus series. you