Words of Jesus Podcast - Do Nothing And Please God

Episode Date: January 7, 2022

Sounds easy, right? It is easy. You just have to give up your right to do as you please. Religion added many traditions, fences, even indulgencies, to interpret the Will-of-God. Jesus came to remove the barriers caused by rebellion and religion to restore the relationship between man and God. Relationships require time and commitment even in the kingdom of God. We can come to God as-we-are and be made whole, but something is required to maintain that status. ***Wilt Thou Be Made Whole (Part 5) CHAPTER 15:  JESUS HEALS A LAME MANIN JERUSALEM, by the sheep market, was the Pool of Bethesda.  Beside it lay a great multitude of invalids—the lame, blind, withered, and bedridden—all waiting for the moving of the water; because at certain times an angel went down into the pool and troubled the water.  Then, whoever was the first to enter the water after its troubling, was cured of whatever disease or infirmity he had.            Jesus, one day, walked beside the Pool of Bethesda and saw a man there who had been infirm and lame for thirty-eight years.  Realizing that he had been so long infirm, Jesus spoke to him, saying;             “Wilt thou be made whole?”            The lame man answered:            “Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool; but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.”            Jesus said to him:            “Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.”            Immediately the man was healed.  He took up his bed and walked away.            This miracle came to pass on the Sabbath.  The Jews, therefore, stoppedthe man who had been cured, saying:             “It is the Sabbath day.  It is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed.”            He answered:            “He that made me whole, the same said unto me, “Take up thy bed, and walk.”            The Jews asked him:            “What man is that which said unto thee, ‘Take up thy bed, and walk’?”             But he who had been healed did not know who his benefactor was, because Jesus had left to avoid the crowd in that place.            Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him:            “Behold, thou art made whole.  Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.”             The man departed and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him.

Think Red Ink Ministries presents the Words of Jesus series. And we've been going through the little book called The Words of Jesus, a compilation of the red ink in the Bible. The four Gospels put together into story forms and I hope you happen to be enjoying it. I know I am. Today's going to be kind of a tough subject because we have been talking, we've been in chapter 15 and of course we're going to continue. And this whole story comes from John 5

and this Jesus healing this lame man, we talked about how Jesus went up and assessed the situation, talked to the man, just looked at the timeline of this malady that this certain person had, and was dealing with it in a very personal way, even so much as asking him how he felt about being healed. The conversation had moved into our attitudes about prayer.

Jesus took his praying to the Father very, very seriously, as I think we should as well. I used the example last time that if you knew you only had 25 prayers left for the rest of your life, you would likely dole them out with a little more discretionary thought than we do now. The idea that prayer is cheap and easy is, and in many cases, an excuse for us and the people we pray for to continue to do whatever it is they want to do. Have you ever had anybody say to you, well, I've prayed about it, and like, there's just nothing we can do. I've prayed about it. I just feel that it's just cheap and

nasty. Those kind of characteristics ought not be attached to prayer. Prayer is an opportunity and a privilege that we've been given to actually let our requests be made known unto God. It's really a wonderful thing, and if that is the case, and if we are indeed going to have an effectual prayer that we're, well, you're just going to have to do it the way He says to do it.

And so, you know, there's some hard things said about this, but I hope it all And so there's some hard things said about this. But I hope it all came home to you. And you've had some time to think about it now. And I'd really love for your prayer life to become as precious to you as anything in your spiritual life altogether. Now, after Jesus heals this man another chapter or another idea begins to unfold. It says that when this

happened the Jews saw it happen. And anytime they see something happen that they're not the center of they're not the center of, they're going to start picking it apart. One of their most common tools was their fascination with, their obsession with the Sabbath. You ever wonder how the Jews got to be so obsessed with the Sabbath day? Now what you'll find is as you know at TRI Ministries, myself and those involved, we take the Sabbath very seriously and

keep it to the best of our ability. Well, we keep the Sabbath. We think it's important to do so. When you keep the Sabbath. We think it's important to do so. When you keep the Sabbath the way the Scripture says to keep it, well, it's just simple and easy to do and it's a God-honoring practice. If you keep the Sabbath the way, well, I don't know, Seventh-day Adventists do it, you know, I don't know. That's them. That's not me.

But that's them. I don't see anything restful at all about having essentially a Sunday church service on Sabbath. I don't see that as resting at all. If you look at it the way many people who essentially don't keep the Sabbath do, their excuse for that is, I think we should worship God every day. Well the Sabbath day has little to do with our worship of God. I agree. I think we should worship God every day. But that's not what the Sabbath commandment tells us to do.

And a lot of times when they say worship I don't know what they mean because the people who talk about Sunday worship, Saturday worship, Sabbath worship, or whatever else, they're talking about the little dog and pony show that they do inside their church building and call that worship, worship services. But you can find people out there that say, I think we should worship God every day. And I ask them, do you go to church every day?

Of course they don't. It's just an excuse to do what they've always done for their own reasons. And very little regard to what the Lord expects us to do, wants us to do, and is honored by what we do, namely keeping the Sabbath day. But how did the Jews get this thing going like they did to where Sabbath is indeed a worship service. They all go to synagogue. They have their services or whatever they do

on Sabbath day. When the scripture that talks about the Sabbath really doesn't mention those things at all. It just says this has to do with your vocation. You work. You work six days and on the seventh you don't. That's all it says. Well, it goes on to explain why but it certainly doesn't say that you're supposed to all meet in the same place and you're all supposed to do this or sing this or preach

this or pray this or any of the rest of this stuff no we just added all that stuff and so we find that the sabbath is very easy to keep This is the day that I don't work. It's really kind of simple. Well, when you find yourself in that situation, not working, you find yourself with a lot of time on your hands, and it's very uncomfortable, as a matter of fact. I don't know if you keep the Sabbath, but if you decide to do it, you're going to find it to be really sort of uncomfortable that there's a day in the week where you don't get to do whatever you want to do it, you're going to find it to be really sort of

uncomfortable. That there's a day in the week where you don't get to do whatever you want to do. Yeah, yeah, afraid so. And the time of fellowship and communication with God grows into and upon that day till it does become a very comfortable thing to do. And then when you add to that the factor of obeying what the Lord told us to do,

well it becomes even sweeter. And all of a sudden you realize after you've kept the Sabbath about a month, my goodness, I haven't broken any of the commandments in 30 days! How in the world did that happen? Well, that's the way it happens. When you decide to quit going your way and start doing what He says to do and what He's revealed to us in His scriptures, all of a sudden you're thinking, well, this ain't so bad. Anyway, how did the Jews get to the point where

the Sabbath was such an obsession with them that they started making laws about it? The end of the Scripture says, thou shalt not kindle a fire on the Sabbath day. I happen to believe that that's poetic language, Jewish prose, if you will, that, that is, is telling us don't begin anything on the Sabbath day. You know, that's not, that's not a time to begin anything. That's a time to rest. That was not the time I began to build the world. I began to build the world on first day. And Saturday was the end of the week and that's when I rested.

That's what I want you to do. But the Jews took thou shalt not kindle a fire on the Sabbath day. And if you did, of course, you were stricken for it. As a matter of fact in the Old Testament, the first man that was ever punished for not keeping the Sabbath day was picking up sticks. Yeah. I don't know, why would he be picking up sticks if he wasn't going to build a fire? So I mean perhaps this was an outcrop of that but as well-meaning Jews who wanted to

please God as this idea became a part of their life, they arbitrarily added to the scriptures by way of the Talmud or whether we're talking about the Mishnah or any of the books of the Talmud where rabbis discuss these things, they decided that not only are we not going to start a fire on the Sabbath day, but we're not going to put one out either.

And I don't know how smart that is. I mean if you're talking about a campfire maybe, but if your house is on fire I would suggest you get yourself a hose and do something about it. So they added to the Scriptures what I call fences around the commandment. Now the reason that they make these laws even harder to keep by their traditions, Jesus says you're making the commandments of God of no effect.

By your traditions. Now, we can't ignore when Jesus says something like this. He's obviously got something on his mind. And, you know, why are you doing this? Well, there's an honest reason for it. There's a well-meaning reason for this. Our Jewish friends were thrown into captivity and the Lord made it very clear through His prophets,

yeah, you got 70 years of captivity and the reason you got 70 years of captivity is because you've been living 490 years without keeping the Sabbath. Well, if you take one out of seven of the 490 years you're going to find that that's 70 years of Sabbath that wasn't kept. And the Lord was making it clear to them, I'm going to get my Sabbath days.

You can either do it voluntarily or you can do it lying on your back in a hospital or whatever else it is that you would determine as being not free. Now I happen to believe that a lot of our financial difficulties that many Christians and many Americans have is frankly because of, because I happen to consider debt to be slavery. We are living

in a slave mentality and in a slave situation in our country. Many people are slaves to their debt. We even hear that term, being slave to debt. I happen to believe that a lot of this is the judgment of God on us. And people who want me to pray for their finances or whatever else, I mean that's my first question. Are you keeping the Sabbath? Are you keeping the commandments? Because there are benefits to obeying God. There are penalties for not obeying

God. And I don't have any intention on praying against the will of God. Now when the Jews realized that it was because of their violations of the Sabbath day, they became very Sabbath sensitive. And they wanted to make sure nobody violated this commandment because they didn't want to go back into captivity. Well, I don't blame them. I don't either. I've been there. It's not fun. So they built what I call fences around the commandment.

If you keep our traditions, you don't have to worry about not keeping the commandment because you're not even going to get close. And so they made these traditions, but in doing so they made the law very difficult to keep. As a matter of fact, the number that gets floated around many of the Messianic circles and even in Jewish frame of references 613 laws that were added to the ten, well I guess 603 legalistically or mathematically

were added to the laws to keep people from violating them. Good intentions perhaps but why don't we just do what the Lord says to do? Well, we do have a tendency to we hear what He says to do and we excuse ourselves. We add ideas to it that allow us to continue to do whatever it was we were doing for our own reasons. And we want to be today just like we were

yesterday, if not just a little bit worse, but we want to continue today what we were doing yesterday and improve our lives today more so than yesterday. I know it's a ridiculous thought, but many people live right there. So the Jewish ideas of laws and their traditions and rituals that had to do with the laws made these things very difficult to keep. Matter of Israel, it was actually done before the law was given.

Did you know that? The Sabbath was instituted before the Ten Commandments were. God used it as a marker, as a reason, as a proof to Moses that these people are rebellious and stiff-necked and they will not do what I say even if what I say to do is nothing. That's amazing to think about. If the Lord told us that he wanted us to dig a 50-foot ditch

two feet deep on the Sabbath day, of course there'd be a new denomination, but we would almost understand that. We would say, okay, yeah, alright, it's something that He wants us to do, but I'm not doing it. Well, you could pretty much say, well, maybe you're not capable, maybe you don't want to, maybe you don't see any point in it or whatever else we make excuses for, but he's telling Moses, look, it doesn't even matter if I tell

him to do nothing. They won't do nothing. And that's not a double negative. They won't do nothing. And that's not a double negative. They won't do nothing, I say. So, okay, that was a double negative. But they won't even do nothing to prove that they love me. And Moses had to concede, well, you're right. Because he told them, don't go out of your tents on the Sabbath day. In this idea of don't go out of your tents, when he said this, and like I say, I don't know, Greek or Hebrew, but one of them says that you're not supposed to move. You ever heard of a Sabbath day's journey? Matter of fact, the New Testament uses the term Sabbath day's journey,

but the Old Testament where the law is given never mentions it. This was a tradition of the Jews. They decided how long a Sabbath day's journey was. It was approximately 3,000 feet. And they said that you can't move past your possession, your home, your house, or whatever, more than 3,000 feet on the Sabbath day. So my understanding is that the Jews of modern Israel have a

little red wire that goes on the power poles of the neighborhoods and stuff like that and it's all claimed by everybody to be their possession. That way they can get in their car and go down to the synagogue on the Sabbath day. They can visit with their friends or go to whatever they need to do on the Sabbath day and never get within or outside of that 3,000 feet of their possession, which happens to be that red wire. I understand that in the old days a man used to

travel out from his home and take a handkerchief or something that belonged to him and tie it in a tree somewhat short of 3,000 feet from his home. I think it's a thousand paces or something like that and he would tie that in the tree and that allowed him to go 3,000 more. And so on and so on and so on so that he could essentially violate and this is the sad part, violate a commandment that God never said. He didn't say that. He didn't say anything about a Sabbath day's journey. But it was established so it was a part of Jewish culture. so it ended up in the New Testament,

but there's no commandment about it at all. Here's Jesus' complaint. You violate the commandments of God by your tradition. Okay, a long history to explain why they were so intent on keeping the Sabbath, but the Sabbath came up right after this man was healed. Immediately the man was healed when Jesus said, take up your bed and walk. Immediately the man was healed.

He took up his bed and walked away. This miracle came to pass on the Sabbath. The Jews, therefore, stopped the man who had been cured, saying, It is the Sabbath day. It is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed, which, by the way, is one of the laws that they made up. He answered, the man answered, He that made me whole. He said to me, Take up your bed and walk. And now it doesn't

continue but I can't help but add to that. What I shouldn't listen to the guy that removed 38 years of my paralytic condition? He told me to do this. The Jews ask him what man is that which said unto thee, take up thy bed and walk? But he who had been healed did not know who his benefactor was, because Jesus had left

to avoid the crowd in that place. What crowd? Well, there was a crowd formed. This fellow had been crippled most of anybody's memory, and all of a sudden he's walking around, a crowd started to form, and Jesus got out of there. Later, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, Behold, you're made whole. I can't help it.

I just love this. It's not like Jesus is just healing him and walking away and just leaving him to himself. He's got to go back and see him. And he sees him and he says, looky there, you're on your feet. That's great. He says, behold thou art made whole. Hey, I need you to quit sinning.

If you continue to sin in this situation, you're going to find yourself in a worse situation. Does anybody talk like this? have you ever heard of anybody that it was healed miraculously by God being counseled this way hey friend the Lord touched you this is wonderful this is mighty this is great this is what you asked for

this is great. This is what you asked for. This is great. But, listen, you're going to have to give your life over to God. You're going to have to go His way unless a worse thing come on you. And that's what He said. Behold, thou art made whole. Sin no more, lest or unless, and if you don't, a worse thing come unto thee. The man departed and told the Jews that it was Jesus who healed him. That was the beginning of Jesus' sorrows, as we'll continue in chapter 16 next time we're together. But I guess this is such a lovely story because it shows

that of course Jesus knew this man was going to tell everybody. If he was looking for fame, there was no reason to go back. If he was looking for the man's thankfulness, I'm sure he saw that on his face. What was he looking for? What was he looking for? What was he looking for? You'll find Jesus in this and another and perhaps more situations where he performs a wonderful miracle

and then he goes back and looks for the person just to see them. I can't help but think that our Lord Jesus and looks for the person just to see them. I can't help but think that our Lord Jesus got a little kick out of this. I can't help but think that it was true love and compassion for people that motivated him. I can't help but believe it. You know what this tells me? He wanted this 38-year-old cripple I can't help but believe it. You know what this tells me?

He wanted this 38-year-old cripple, 38 years old, cripple for 38 years. We don't know how old he was. He wanted this man to walk again. And the fact that he had to run because the crowd was getting thick and, you know, Jesus was, he had a plan. It wasn't that he was just looking for fame. He wasn't just trying to, he didn't go buy a football stadium

and try to fill the seats. That's not what he was after. What he was after was touching the lives of people. And when that became a problem, when that became difficult to do, one of the things that made that difficult to do was crowds. You'll find that many times when Jesus would heal a man, he'd say, don't tell anybody what happened to you. And we talked about this. It happened as we went through our book.

He said, don't tell anybody what happened to you. But the Bible says that the man went home and blazed abroad the matter. Well, when he did, Jesus' plan for that whole town was thwarted by one big mouth that just had to tell people what Jesus meant to him or give his testimony. I don't know what motivates people. I want to believe that it's good intentions. But why don't we just do what we're told? Jesus said, don't tell anybody, so what do I do?

You don't tell anybody, that's what you do. And had he not told anyone, then he would not have had the press. The Bible uses the term press, and it's talking about the crowd pressing upon him and clogging things up and stopping him from doing what he needed to do. And so he knowing that if this guy goes and tells a story, he's going to have to deal with the crowd tomorrow. So what does it say he did? He went into another city.

So a whole town suffered because one man had to tell everybody what Jesus was doing. I know you think that that's always the right thing to do, but it's not. Sometimes we are called of God to shut up. I think this is a perhaps a commandment or a request of Jesus that's the most disobeyed there is in Christendom. We just have to tell Jesus, tell everybody about the parking place that Jesus gave us. We have to tell him that, you know, the girl at the checkout counter at McDonald's didn't charge her for one hamburger,

and so I just said, thank you, Jesus. Even though the poor girl's probably going to have to pay for it out of her salary. I think that we look at every, you know, my car ran out of gas, and I just rolled into the gas station. Thank you, Jesus. Well, if you want to do that, you know, you don't need my permission to do it. You're going to do it anyway. But I'm afraid that what we do is we make it harder for Jesus to minister.

Because while he's pouring gas in your gas tank, there's some poor little gal down the road that's praying over a baby that she doesn't want to minister. Because while he's pouring gas in your gas tank, there's some poor little gal down the road that's praying over a baby that she doesn't want to die. You're going to have a hard time explaining to her that Jesus didn't do whatever he did for her, but he made sure that you didn't have to walk in high heels. You know, hey, isn't the right thing to do in a lot of cases just to shut up? Oh, that's a horrible place to end the show, but our time is gone. Now, we'd like to hear from you.

If you'd like to write to me, you can just write to Don at thinkredink.com. Go to thinkredink.com and look around. See if there's anything that we can do for you. Write to us. Let us know what it is. And you can write to us at Think Red Ink Ministries,

PO Box 718, Pytown, New Mexico, 87827. Thank you so much. 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