Words of Jesus Podcast - Be Careful How You Hear

Episode Date: July 5, 2024

Second death - resurrection at the end of the millennium; satan loosed - many follow him; Jesus only hath resurrection; Caiaphas prophesied unknowingly; one should die for the nation; Prophesy is not fortune/ future telling; Prophesy is rather a man speaking to men for God; sins make men unable to hear - ex. David & Nathan. History records that people kill men who speak for God. We can only avoid deception by loving truth; not by memorizing the words of the bible.Repent! Change! The Word of God can come from anyone i.e., a jackass, a drunk, preachers, strangers. Be careful how you hear;***77: Jesus Raises Lazarus From The DeadJohn 11:1-53Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary, whose home was in Bethany, was sick. The sisters sent a message to Jesus, saying:            “Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick.”            When the word concerning Lazarus reached Jesus, he said:            “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.”            Jesus remained where he was for two days, and at the end of that time said to his disciples:            “Let us go into Judea again.”            His disciples replied:            “Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee. And goest thou thither again?”            Jesus answered his disciples, saying:            “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of the world. But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.”            Then Jesus told his disciples why he wanted to go into Judea, saying:            “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep.”            The disciples, not knowing that Jesus meant that Lazarus was dead, thought only that he was resting in sleep. They said to Jesus:            “Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well.”            Then Jesus spoke plainly, saying to them:            “Lazarus is dead. And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe; nevertheless let us go unto him.”            Thomas, the disciple who was called Didymus, said:            “Let us go, that we may die with him.”            When Jesus arrived at Bethany, he found that Lazarus was dead and had been in his grave four days.            Because Bethany was near Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs away, many Jews from that city had come to comfort Martha and Mary. When Martha heard that Jesus was approaching, she went out to meet him while Mary remained at home. She said:            “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. But I know that, even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of...

Think Red Ink Ministries presents the Words of Jesus series with Don C. Harris. Hello my friends and welcome once again to the Words of Jesus series. Don Harris, your host. We've been talking about the resuscitation of Lazarus. You remember the difference between resuscitation and resurrection? You know, mainly I think what that is, is when we arise in the resurrection, the intention is that we are brought from death to a life that is to never end. Of course, you know, nobody wants to talk about it. Nobody wants to preach it.

But the fact of the matter is, is there is such a thing as even death to those kinds of people. What do you want to talk about it? I don't know if you want to talk about it. But the truth is that at the end of the millennial reign of Christ, when the world is populated by people who attained the first resurrection, Jesus Christ is our king, Satan is bound, we don't have him to blame anymore. So the Flip Wilson gospel of the devil made me do it. That goes out the window. Everything becomes

our fault and unfortunately the scriptures say that at the end time, at the end of that time that Satan is loosed and when he is he deceives the nations again. It's hard to believe that people are going to be living in the millennial reign of Christ where he is king of the whole earth. we've been set up as rulers over cities over the over the entire earth righteousness reigns and uh you know the

love of god just sprinkles down like rain and trickles through the brooks i mean paint any picture you want it's a lot better than it is here however in some people's minds it's not going to be enough and somehow satan is going to tempt a group of people and the number is like the stars of heaven that's a lot of people and he's going to take a bunch of people away do you know the bible really doesn't really say a whole lot about eternity it doesn't really say it talks about that millennial reign and i and i'm tickled about you know having some way to attain that kind of life but even when we're there it's still not over i'll let you think about that over the weekend um and i'm not saying that, I had somebody write to me and say,

are you saying that if we make it, we still haven't made it? Don't let that sour you. I would say that bad news would be that there's nothing you can do about it. But there is. Let's love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. And our neighbor as ourselves. All right.

So we talked about at the end of this situation with Lazarus being raised from the dead that it caused a big stir this chapter 77 in our book it caused a big stir among the Jews to the point that they held a council and said we got a problem this fella is doing irrefutable miracles now there's nothing we can do there's no way to discredit him anymore there's nothing we can do. There's no way to discredit him anymore. There's nothing we can do.

He's just going to have to die. And wow, really? That's the end of all this? We're going to murder him? Well, it wasn't the intention to murder Jesus Christ. His intention was to give himself willingly as a sacrifice for many. But that idea is being thwarted right now. It's being plotted against and planned and this is where it all started. However,

even in the wickedness of the thought that Caiaphas had, Caiaphas being the high priest, even in the midst of that wickedness, he spoke something that was not necessarily idle speech. Him, the Bible says he was high priest that year and and unwittingly he says don't you know that i mean it it should be understood that one man should die for the people now now when he said that he was saying that

well you know if you want to if you want a star trek reference you know that uh you know the the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few right and and it was it was along those lines that okay fine if one person has to die to save a nation it's worth it. That's what he was saying. But now the writer of the gospels, of this particular gospel, said that he didn't realize that what he had said was prophecy. He prophesied Jesus to die for the entire nation, and not just for the nation, but for the whole whole world now it's interesting that caiaphas

didn't know that he was prophesying there's a lot about prophecy that we don't understand one of them is it's not fortune telling a lot of people you know they say um you know like something's going to happen in the future and somebody say they proph it. Well, prophesied does not mean tell the future. Telling the future can be contained in prophecy. But the correct definition of prophecy is simply speaking for God. I do that all the time. I would love to say a whole lot of preachers do that but uh it's it's kind of hard

to witness but there is such a thing as a man on the earth speaking for god under the unction of the holy spirit that's prophecy and it has nothing to do with telling the future it's uh you know we we kind of threw prophecy into the same bucket with tarot cards or reading tea leaves or something like that. My goodness, friends, can't we shake that stuff off and get rid of it and use the definitions of the men who use these words? What were they thinking when they said that well caiaphas purpose uh was a man who spoke for god you know david was a prophet a lot of people don't really think of david as a prophet they think of him as a king but not as a prophet well peter said he was a prophet. And when David said, you know, my Lord said unto my Lord, this is a prophet speaking.

All right, are we talking about a magic man? Are we talking about a man who sees into the future? No, you're talking about a man who speaks for God. He speaks God's words to God's people. That makes him a prophet. It's, I want to say it's just not as big as all that but really the truth is it's bigger than telling the future the idea of telling the future came from the old testament where the lord was telling the children of israel i'm going to hold you accountable for listening to the prophets.

You need to listen to what they say and do what they say. And they said, well, how do we know that what they're saying is indeed, it indeed comes from you? And he says, well, I'll give them a sign and they'll give you that sign if the sign comes to pass and this this sign is obviously something that's outside the the purview or the ability of a of a human being to execute it uh it has to be something i mean weather-wise or you know some miraculous movement of some kind but i'll give that prophet a sign if you're having a hard time believing what he's saying, I'll give him a sign. Sign comes to pass, you better do what he says. If the sign doesn't come to pass,

take him out and stone him. He's not my prophet. He's spoken presumptuously. He said what he thought I said, or he's got some other agenda working or whatever else. But it was because of that, of them saying, you know, this time tomorrow such and such will happen, that we've gotten the idea that prophets see the future. They can be given the future by the Lord God,

but I've never really seen it very clear it's always in kind of shadowy language and you know that there's there'd be a handful of different ways for it to actually happen I'd love to talk about prophecy with you because it's it's there's just a lot about that we don't talk about that the scriptures do and we probably ought to know something about it most people believe that if they had confidence in a man of being a prophet that they would listen to what he says that's not true history doesn't prove that out uh matter of fact history when it comes to uh god's church israel god's church and his prophet we usually kill them and john asked the question which of the prophets haven't you persecuted

you want time to think about this do you hear the jeopardy theme playing in the background they're going to have a hard time coming up with the name of a prophet that they didn't persecute, and in some cases kill and saw in half. So forget the idea that, you know, you're better than everybody else, and then, you know, if you believe he's a man of God, yeah, wait till he tells you something that's actually the word of God, that actually does make the secrets of your heart manifest, that actually does give you instruction for the future and tells you what's wrong with your life and how to change it. Let's see if you obey it. That's how we're going to know whether you believe that he's a prophet or not.

Now, I say all that to tell you that we have an ability as Christians, if you are keeping the commandments of God, not disobeying your conscience, and listening to the voice of God every day, you're in a really cool position. You have understanding, you have wisdom, you have protection, you have leadership and guidance, and I mean, wow, that is such a neat place to be. Now, if you happen to be a so-called Christian, he doesn't keep the commandments.

He reads his Bible every day and he goes to church and he's going to protect himself from deception by knowing every word in the Bible. We need to compare it with Scripture to make sure we're not being deceived. If you're one of those people, there's hardly a hope for you. Hardly a hope. Now, you'll do better by reading your scriptures and by not reading them.

But the Bible teaches us that we avoid deception by loving truth. It's very, very clear. It doesn't say you have to know all truth. It doesn't say you have to know the Bible. It doesn't say you have to know the Bible from one end to the other and be able to quote scripture. And then you don't have to worry about being deceived. Look, man, we can all be deceived. All of us, even by the way, the very elect, another subject for another day. However, we are going to have to because of our our sinfulness because of our i i have to say the tainting that has happened to us living in the flesh being carnal and making

mistakes and errors and missing the mark and all these kinds of things that are a part of our life they really clog up our ears and you know we have big wads of cotton packed into our ears and we're not hearing very well we're not hearing the voice of god very well because we just won't live in such a way as channels and um so there there there comes there there becomes necessary a prophet even in a christian's life who supposedly has and does but he's not exercising it has communication with god almighty but in some cases take david's situation where you know he did that thing with beth bethsheba and murdered her husband it was a it was a huge problem and what it did was is cut off communication between god and david God and David. And so Nathan the prophet had to be called up, raised up to go to David and get the word of God to

him. You see how that happened? God couldn't speak to David because the sin was ever before me as David says. And so Nathan was sent to him to speak to him because David was in no condition to hear. There will come times in Christians' lives, everybody's life, when we need to hear the word of God,

but we can't hear it within us, we're going to have to let it come through our ears. And I said a while ago that our ears are stuffed with cotton i'm not talking about these pieces of cartilage on the side of your head i'm talking about the ears that jesus said if you have ears to hear let them hear those ears and when they're stopped up we are we're forced to hear god's voice through our physical ears well jesus says no man's seen God at any time or heard his voice. So what's going to happen? How are you going to do that? If you can't hear his voice,

then how are you going to hear his voice? You're going to hear his voice through a prophet. When we define the word prophet, like we did a while ago, it's a man who speaks the word of god to god's people or to the world but he's speaking the word of god out of his mouth making vibrations in the air that wiggle people's eardrums it's a very low form of communication as far as god's concerned i know with you you know and if if you were to hear, everybody always says, you know, I heard God speak. And they always put a little parenthetical in there. No, I didn't hear an audible voice. You know, you don't have to tell me that. It's okay.

I understand you didn't hear an audible voice. He's just trying to say, I'm not crazy. Well, maybe you are. but that's another subject. But we need to hear from God, and many times we need to hear from his prophet. We need to hear from his prophet, and we need to hear those words. Now, this is all kind of cut and dried up until now,

but we have men like caiaphas a prophet a high priest of israel say something that is indeed the word of god and even he doesn't know it that's a peculiar situation you take uh john the baptist they came to john the baptist and said are you elijah he said no are you christ no are you that prophet well i'd love to preach on this kind of stuff but these things are so rich they just they just keep going and going are you that prophet and he said no i'm not i'm just the voice of one crying in the wilderness prepare you the way of the lord interesting john the baptist was asked specifically are you el? He said no. He didn't know, essentially, that he indeed was Elijah.

How do we know he's Elijah? Well, Jesus said so. He, you know, his disciples were all concerned because the Pharisees came to him, showed him their Sunday school literature and told him, now, you see, Jesus can't come unless this, this, and this happen.

And this hasn't happened. Soesus can't come unless this this and this happened and this hasn't happened so it this can't be jesus we do this all the time i don't it has anything changed in the last 2 000 years not much and so the disciples came to jesus and said the pharisees told us that john the baptist has to come before you come is that true and he says yeah it's true well well well but but but but and he said elijah did i say john the baptist a while ago i always throw those two words together they say that elijah should come before you do. And Jesus is saying he did come. And they said, well, we didn't see him.

Sure you did. John the Baptist. This was, if you will receive it. Oh, man, there's some weight in those words. If you will receive it, this was Elijah, which was for to come. And they did to him whatever they wanted. They eventually killed him. Of course they killed him.

He was a prophet. He spoke the words of God, the uncomfortable words of God. How dare he? Well, here we have a prophet of god again that was indeed and i use the word reincarnation please don't read anything into that but he elijah was reincarnated or his spirit was put into different flesh in the flesh of John the Baptist however John the Baptist had no idea that that was the case if you had known he was Elijah would you have listened to what he said it what he said

or would you have strictly evaluated everything he says by this guy you know he wears camel hair he kind of stinks he doesn't doesn't comb his hair or shave properly or you know he i understand the guy eats grasshoppers come on are we listening to this guy? See, if he's just a man of flesh, then it kind of provides for us an out. We don't have to necessarily listen to everything he says. Isn't this what we do? Sure it is. That's what we do.

Had you known he was Elijahijah would you have listened to him oh yeah well if we'd have known that all right what's going on here there's a respect for the prophet and and so people feel like if he speaks, that it has some kind of an authority to it. A person who's not necessarily a prophet, do they indeed have that kind of authority? Look, this is none of your business. You know what your business is?

You know what your duty is? To live in such a way that you hear the word of God within you. And it doesn't matter if it's a drunk in the gutter mumbling it through rotten teeth. If he says what the Lord God has to say to you, you ought to be the person that can hear it and say, that's the word of God. Not judge the vessel. Not look and say, how could that be the word of God. Not judge the vessel. Not look and say, how could that be the word of God?

Why the man doesn't even have two shoes on? And, okay, that's an extreme example. But, you know, we have people in our life that some of the wisest people we've ever known. I understand. He drinks wine. We can't listen to him. Is it the word of God or is it not? You know, he doesn't attend our church. Or as the disciples said, he walks not with us. And Jesus is saying, look, these people are speaking good about me.

They're speaking the word of God. And here's what I want you to know. There's a danger in missing the word of God sent to you by people that you don't necessarily respect. You don't necessarily even like them. And sometimes it's a humbling thing. It's a humbling thing for me to be watching television and hear Marilyn Hickey say something that is absolutely the most brilliant thing I've ever heard.

That's the word of God coming out of her mouth. It's difficult for me, okay? Nevertheless, nothing against maryland i'm just trying to make real time examples for us there are preachers that you don't like but that doesn't mean that what they have to say is absolutely worthless because they don't fit in your scheme of things that's one problem i want to talk about the other problem that's the ones that do fit that's the prophet that you do respect that you do honor that you give him his own parking place and that he wears nice suits and he smells good his hair is always combed and he says praise the lord hallelujah thank you jesus all the time he prays over his meals i mean i i've seen him pray downtown at the at the cattle club or at the

at the one of those at the smorgasbord country buffet he doesn't care that there's a thousand people out there. He stands in praise. What a wonderful man. Or whatever reason you have within yourself to elevate this person to some stature, you listen to what he says, whether he's telling you the truth or not. Do you know that it's not the word of God? When you're talking about the bum in the gutter, do you know that it might be the word of God? How are we supposed to tell the difference?

How are we supposed to know? You're supposed to know. It's your duty to know. I don't know how you're supposed to know. It's your duty to know. I don't know how you're going to know if this is your source. I do know how you're going to know if the Holy Spirit is a part of your everyday life, if you're spending time before the Word of God, which is Jesus Christ, spending time before the Father, listening to Him give you instruction. You've learned to obey your conscience. You've learned to listen to the words behind the words.

You keep the commandments of God. Friend, you're going to hear the Word of God and you're going to be surprised where it comes from. Came out of a jackass once. Some of you might say that it's coming out of a jackass now. Some of you might say that it's coming out of a jackass now. That's your opinion. But however a person is evaluated in your eyes has nothing to do with the fact that what he's telling you is a truth or what he's telling you is a lie.

This is why Jesus said, he gave us two pieces of advice in this area. Be careful what you hear hear be careful how you hear the the church of the living god out there has been diligent to the point of absolute dogma to to the point of being you, fanatical about being careful what you hear. Oh, I wouldn't let a Jehovah Witness in my house. Really? You wouldn't serve them coffee?

Treat them like human beings? They are human beings, you know. Yeah, but, you know, you have to be careful what you hear. Let me tell you something. And so we reject people because we don't want to ever we don't want to hear false doctrine i don't care it doesn't bother me yeah i mean i don't like false doctrine but i'll tell you what i can what i can do because i keep the commandments of god because i do i just i my conscience, because I take time every day to hear the voice of God, I don't fear false doctrine. It doesn't bother me at all. I can hear

it. I recognize it. I know how to take it and throw it in the garbage can, no matter if it came out of Diamond Jim Brady or a bum in the gutter. How can you do that? Boy, once you've heard the word of God, once you've heard it within yourself and you know not only what to hear that you're so particular about, but you know how to hear. See, we're not really equipped to repair or to live in our spiritual state by taking in words through our ear holes. That's one way to hear. How other way is there to hear? The way Jesus said, take heed to yourselves.

Take heed to yourselves. Be careful what you hear yourselves be careful what you hear be careful how you hear and if you have ears to hear here so what's he saying how you hear is i think more important than what you hear if you know how to, you don't have to dodge false doctrine. All right, our time's gone. Well, it's been good. And I appreciate you being a part of the show. Till next time, Think Red Ink, my friend.

Bye-bye. You've been listening to Don C. Harris of Think Red Ink Ministries. Email don at thinkredink. Email don at thinkredink.com. That's thinkredink.com. Join us again for the next episode in the Words of Jesus series. you