Words of Jesus Podcast - Can God Tell You What To Do

Episode Date: November 15, 2024

Instruction from Jesus is not a promise-box verse. You are not allowed to make another selection until you find one that pleases you. Our God is not ink on a page. Our God is ALIVE. Embrace the words of love and correction by Jesus.Jesus was persecuted by the Church because He obeyed His Father. When we imitate Jesus, we will also be persecuted. Jesus preached, "Repent! [Change] to the Scribes and Pharisees. Jesus wanted them to be acceptable. Jesus wants the same for us. Changes are required to follow Jesus. Purge what other people think from your conscience. The peer pressure (or leaven) in our lives can make a permanent separation between us and our God. Will you accept instruction and correction from your Lord and Savior? ***98: Jesus Rebukes The Scribes And PhariseesMatthew 23:1-39; Mark 12:38-40; Luke 20:45-47Jesus Rebukes The Scribes And PhariseesThen Jesus spoke to the people that were assembled and to his disciples saying:Pride            “The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works; for they say, and do not. For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. But all their works they do for to be seen of men. They make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments, and love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, and greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, ‘Rabbi, Rabbi.’ But be not ye called Rabbi; for one is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father upon the earth; for one is your Father, which is in Heaven. Neither be ye called masters; for one is your Master, even Christ. But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted. Various Sins            “But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye shut up the kingdom of Heaven against men; for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!For ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayer. Therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, 'Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor.’Ye fools and blind, for which is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold? And, ‘Whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing; but whosoever sweareth by the gift that is upon it, he is guilty.’ Ye fools and blind, for which is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift?Whoso therefore shall swear by the altar, sweareth by it, and by all things thereon. And whoso shall swear by the temple, sweareth by it, and by him that dwelleth therein. And he that shall swear by Heaven, sweareth by the throne of God, and by him that sitteth thereon. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. These ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel, Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!For ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the

Think Red Ink Ministries presents The Words of Jesus Series with Don C. Harris Hello my friends, welcome once again to the Words of Jesus series. Don Harris, your host. Think Red Ink Ministries in Pytown, New Mexico. Glad to always have you on board. Well, I've been warning you for several shows now that things are about to get bad. Well, they do. They do get bad. Jesus decides to preach to the scribes and Pharisees.

We're going to be reading from chapter 98 of our little book. And, wow, he really lets it go. And, you know, I think that we're going to do ourselves a huge disservice if we push this into the past where he's talking to the scribes and pharisees he's not talking to me well the scribes and pharisees honestly they didn't have any problems that we don't have ourselves and so what jesus had to say to them it's very difficult very difficult to listen to however we do need to hear it and, and we need for that to go within us so that we can make changes in our lives.

It's obvious what aggravates our Lord. And if we find those attributes in our own lives, those kind of changes just need to be made. So he's about to do it. He's about to seal his fate right now he has things to say to these religious leaders that are going to be very difficult that is going to be answered by his murder and so this is where it starts getting rough chapter 98 of our little book this is where jesus rebukes the scribes and the Pharisees.

When Jesus spoke to the people that were assembled and he spoke to his disciples saying that the scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. All therefore they bid you to do, observe. That I want you to observe and do, but do not after their works. For they say, and do not. They bind heavy burdens that are grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders. But they themselves will not move them, not with one of their fingers.

But all their works they do for to be seen of men. They make broad their phylacteries. They enlarge the borders of their garments. They love the uppermost rooms at feasts and the chief seats in the synagogues and greetings in the markets. and to be called of men rabbi rabbi be ye not called rabbi for one is your master even christ and all you are brethren and call no man on the on the earth your father for one is your father which is in heaven.

Neither be ye called masters, for one is your master, even Christ. But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant, and whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased, and he that shall humble himself be exalted. But woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men. For ye neither go

in yourselves, neither suffer ye that they who are entering to go in. Woe unto you scribes, Pharisees, fakers, for you devour widows' houses for a pretense, make long prayers. You therefore shall receive the greater damnation. Woe unto you scribes, Pharisees, pretenders, for you compass sea and land to make one proselyte.

And when he's made, you make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. Woe unto you blind guides which say, whosoever shall swear by the temple, it's nothing. But whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor, fools, blind. For which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold? And whosoever shall swear by the altar, it's nothing. But whosoever shall swear by the gift

that is on it, oh, he's guilty. Fools and blind. For which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift? Whoso therefore shall swear by the altar, sweareth by it and by all things thereon. And whoso shall swear by the temple, sweareth by it and by him that dwelleth therein and he that shall swear by heaven sweareth by the throne of god and by him that sitteth thereon well unto you scribes pharisees fakers you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin and have omitted the weightier matters of the law,

judgment, mercy, faith. These you ought to have done, but not to leave the other undone. You blind guides that strain at a gnat and swallow camels. Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You may clean the outside of the

cup and the platter, but within, they're full of extortion and excess. Now blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and the platter, and that outside,

they'll be clean also. Woe unto you, scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, for you're like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, all uncleanness. Even so, ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within you're full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

Woe unto you, scribes, Pharisees, pretenders, because you build the tombs of the prophets and garnish the sepulchers of the righteous and say, if we had been in the days of our father, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore, you be witnesses unto yourselves that you are the children of them which killed the prophets.

Fill ye up the measure of your fathers, you serpents, you generation of vipers. How can you escape the damnation of hell? Wherefore behold, I send you prophets, wise men, scribes, and some of them you shall kill and crucify, and some of them you shall scourge in your synagogues and persecute them from city to city,

that upon you may come all the righteous bloodshed upon the earth from the blood of righteous Abel Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them which are sent unto thee. How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. And you would not. Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, you shall not see me henceforth

till you shall say, blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Friend, this was not just discouraging. This was in the face of then modern religion. This is the only religion on the earth. These people worshiped the God of creation.

This was the center of all that was godly, all that had anything to do with spiritual things on the earth. The Son of God Himself came to redeem it for its name's sake, for love's sake. And they rejected Him. This is tantamount to every religion on the face of the earth rejecting the message of Jesus Christ. Did I just describe the day in which we live today?

Do you think that those Pharisees, scribes, those hypocrites, those vipers, do you think that they within themselves felt as though they were rejecting God? I assure you that if the inquiry went among all the prophets and all the preachers and all the people on the earth that are steeped in, that propagate, that have a part of religion in general in the earth today? I don't know that you would ever find anybody among any of them that didn't think that they were honoring God. So, do good intentions actually count?

You know, we have more excuses for doing things our way than, well, I was going to say than anyone. It's the entire population. We do this in every area of our life. There is one place you will not get away with this and that is with the god that we serve the provisions that he's made for us the sacrifices that our god has made for us and do you think that we can twist his words

twist his religion ignore his prophets ignore what the scriptures say cut out certain verses certain books certain chapters we can just ignore certain ideas, not talk about them, not include them in our Sunday school literature, just so we can keep our denomination intact? Really, is that, do you really think that's going to work somehow? Okay, so I don't pray the way Jesus teaches us to pray, but it makes me feel good do you really think that's a reason and an excuse okay so we don't give in our church the way jesus says to give i know he said don't do it in public but you know really how bad is that well how bad is that am i supposed to ask you that or am I supposed to check with the Son of God

who made himself very clear on these points? Really, is it all right for you to walk around with unforgiveness in your heart? To bear a grudge against somebody else? To hold them at blame for the rest of their life? It's okay to keep that kind of unforgiveness in your heart. Oh, because your denomination teaches that all you have to do is ask God to forgive you and everything's okay. Is that right? Well, I'm going to tell you, your denomination may teach you that, but this book teaches you to repent. That means to change. You're going to have to change. And you're going to have to forgive your neighbor.

You'd think that you can just remove those ideas from the scriptures? Look, a lot of times I have to stop and realize I'm not only talking to the people who are trying to get away with stuff the hell dodgers as i call them the people who want to know the minimum necessary you know what's you know what's the what's the minimum i can do to get the maximum benefit i realize there's a group of people that think that way but But that's not all of you. I understand that. I understand that there's a lot of you that are really more interested in becoming a good Baptist, becoming a good Pentecostal, becoming a good Catholic,

than you are anything else in your life. But I realize that's not everyone. You know who I'm really concerned about? I'm concerned about the little guy that's sitting off saying, you know, a lot of this doesn't make any sense. I really do want a relationship with God. What do I do? To whom do I go?

To whom do I listen? How do I direct my life to make this thing work? And you've just simply been misguided. If that's the case, I'm concerned for you. You know, when it comes to the religious leadership, I think Jesus made it very clear. He loved the sinners. He loved the people who wanted to do the right thing

for the right reasons. But man, he had no resistance whatsoever. He wasn't holding back at all when he was talking to church leadership. Why is that? They have put themselves in the position between you and God and it is absolutely unacceptable. I know you did it. I mean, many of you who have an honest and decent heart and want to do the right thing. I know, I know why you did it, why you did it for

the same reason I did. How did we know? How did we know we were going to be lied to? How did we know that we were going to inherit lies from people that we trusted? How did we know that we were going to inherit lies from people that we trusted? How did we know that? We didn't know that. We did the best we could. If you're in that category, look, Don, I didn't know this was the wrong thing to do. Well, you do now. It's time to take a stand.

You notice Jesus' little appellate that he attached to these religious leaders he was stuck in every one of them hypocrite pretender faker what was their concern all their concern always was what other people thought of them when there is a hurdle a huge and high hurdle between you and the man you're supposed to be. And that's what you think and what you feel about what other people think and what they feel. It's none of your concern. This situation of your redemption is between you and the Father alone. We have one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus,

the one we just listened to preach a fireball sermon that's going to get him killed. He knows. You take this stand, you better be willing to die for what you believe. This is why he said deny yourself don't do what makes you happy don't be so concerned about what makes you comfortable we need to deny ourselves we need to follow him we need to follow him. Do what he says do. These aren't the only two rules. The other one is to take up your cross.

You have to be willing to be crucified for what you believe. You have to be willing to die for what you believe. This free salvation is running up quite a tally as far as I'm concerned. I don't see anything free about it. I see that it's going to require people with constitution with determination and consistency and honesty that are going to stand for what they know is the right thing to do sometimes i really make people mad because they say, oh, Brother Harris, why don't you pray over this meal? Oh, no, no, no.

Choose someone else. And so after the meal, somebody will undoubtedly come to me and say, you know what they think, what they think in those situations. I don't want to pray for the meal or I can't pray for the meal because I'm in some state of sin or something. And, you know, is there anything I can pray about,

which is a Christian's way of, you know, gathering gossip? And I say, no, I can't do that because I'm a Christian. I'm led by the Spirit of God. I'm under the mandates of the words of Jesus Christ. You know where I have trouble? In religious situations, around religious people. That's where you're going to have problems. If you're under the impression that the Romans crucified Jesus you're

wrong if you're under the impression that Pilate wanted to crucify Jesus you're misreading your scriptures Jesus said they will persecute you in their synagogues friend he's saying that your persecution is going to come from inside religion. It's going to come from inside your family. This is the sword that he came with in his hand. This is the division that takes place. Your faith in Christ,

you can have it the rest of your life. Your regeneration, I hope you experience it. But your repentance and your change and your change of attitude, your change of practice and procedure, policy, those kind of things, they're going to run you down. Who is? The world? You think they're going to be mad at you? They're not going to be mad at you.

As a matter of fact, if you do this right, if you live in this way correctly, you're going to experience something you've never experienced before in your life. Lost people that don't know God will want to know why you have the kind of peace you have. Then they'll want to know where did you receive such an understanding and such a peace in your life as you have. Then you're going to understand what witnessing is all about. We're not called to go out and knock on people's doors and ask them if they know Jesus. Chances are the person asking you the question doesn't even know Jesus.

What are we supposed to do? What the scriptures tell us. Be ready to give an answer. An answer is an answer to a question. They are questioning your life. If you're not questioning theirs, they're questioning your life you're not questioning theirs they're questioning your life the reason that people don't really know or care about the average christian's life is because it's essentially no different than anybody else's it's just a matter of what they believe god

doesn't care about what you do he only cares about what you believe there are some preachers that actually say that with their mouths not with their brains i can't believe that they have even thought about it but they actually say things like that with their mouth so who who's being persecuted christians in this case christ who's doing persecuted? Christians, in this case, Christ. Who's doing the persecuting? The church. That's where your persecution is going to come from. You know, when Jesus said, the world hates me, he wasn't talking about the sinners.

The sinners thought he was the greatest thing to come along. Slice bread in a plastic wrapper. Man, oh man, finally somebody's telling the truth. Finally somebody's putting these Pharisees where they belong. I knew it was fake. I knew it was phony. They're behind him. Where does his trouble come from?

Religion. Religion put Jesus on the cross. I know you think it was your sins, and I understand what that means, and I understand. But friend, if it wasn't for religion, Jesus would have never died on a cross. Hear me?

If it wasn't for religion, he would have never been murdered on a stick outside Jerusalem's gate. If the religion of the day, if you want to call it that, if God's people of the day had accepted Jesus Christ, if they had received Jesus Christ for who he was and worshipped him justly and properly, he would have given his life, but he would have given it on the altar, at the temple. And from there, we would have entered into the millennial reign,

like it was his purpose. His purpose wasn't to come to the earth and do something and then let the world rock on for 2,000 years in its sin and degradation. How did that happen? I just read it to you. My people rejected me. They slammed the door in my face.

I could not get in. Therefore, your house is left unto you desolate you can listen to all the sermons you want you can click on all the sermons you want on the internet that talk about what's wrong with the church today and i guarantee you you're not going to find that the church is just run by hypocrites it's run by fakers it's run by phonies it's run by people who have no business being in that position it's very difficult to look at a preacher and say or look at a bible teacher and say you know the bible says not to be called a teacher. The Bible teaches don't be a bunch of teachers.

Many masters is the way it says. Be not many masters, seeing that we shall receive the greater condemnation. You see, that's a very dangerous place to be. What about the bishops that run the church? I believe in overseers, especially when you're talking about a local organized church.

I believe that they're absolutely necessary. But pastor? We have one pastor. Matter of fact, he's not even a pastor. He's a shepherd. Pastors are hirelings they're hirelings you think they like being told that yeah try it sometime I'll tell you from experience it's not pleasant at all everybody wants to be in

charge Jesus says you can't be in charge in In this sermon, he just got done saying, be ye not called masters, be ye not called reverend. You know that's what rabbi means, right? You're not even supposed to accept a title like that. One is your reverend. One is your teacher. One's your master.

One is your rabbi. Even Christ. one is your teacher one's your master one is your rabbi even christ that's pretty cut and pick and clear so why do we have all these teachers why do you have all the teachers you have because you don't have the one that's why it's simple. Friend, it's time to repent. It is time to change the way we do things and bring about as best we can some repentant body of Christ on the earth. And perhaps we can enter somehow into the kingdom of God

that is to come on the earth. Late. That's right. Late. Way late. We are way late on this. The apostle said, you know, don't take this waiting time as God doesn't care.

Or all things are just like they've always been. So therefore, you know as God doesn't care. Or all things are just like they've always been. So therefore, you know, God doesn't care. No, the reason we're late, my friend, the reason we're late, he's waiting on you. He waits and waits as he waited in the time of Noah. You know, it talks about this ark being prepared for so many years. It don't take that long to build an ark.

It just doesn't take that long. What was a preparing, as the Bible says. It was our precious Holy Father God waiting for us to repent. For us to knock on the door of the ark. That's what we should have done. Should have knocked while it was open. Friend, that door is going to close one of these days. You're going to wonder why you didn't do this. As a matter of fact you're going to wonder at you didn't do this. As a matter of fact, you're going to wonder at the moment you open your eyes after death. Because the first thing you're going to see

is the glory of God. And all your excuses are going to melt away and go into vapor and into dust. Now is the time. Now, today is the day. We need to make a change. It's time for us to go. I'll see you on the next show. Till I see you again, 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. I love you.