Words of Jesus Podcast - Do What Jesus Tells You - Good Advice

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

The words of Jesus were intentional, exceptional and powerful. Consider the source! Indeed, Jesus healed lepers as a witness to his Jewish brethren. The strangers, Samaritan, Roman centurion, Syrophoenician received the word of God with faith and enthusiasm.  There was a glaring lack of faith of the Jewish brethren toward both John and Jesus. They were looking for a "certain" Messiah and no amount of evidence was able to open the closed eyes of the Priests, Pharisees, and Sadducees. ***78: Jesus Heals Ten LepersLuke 17:11-19Jesus passed through Samaria and Galilee on a journey to Jerusalem. As he came to a village, ten men who were lepers stood off from him and cried out, saying:            “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”            Jesus answered them, saying:            “Go show yourselves unto the priests.”            As they went, they were healed. One of them, a Samaritan, when he realized that he was healed, returned to Jesus, fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving thanks and glorifying God in a loud voice.            Jesus, seeing him, asked:            “Were there not ten cleansed? But where are the nine? There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger.”            Then Jesus said to the grateful Samaritan:            “Airse, go thy way. Thy faith hath made thee whole.” 

Think Red Ink Ministries presents The Words of Jesus Series with Don C. Harris Hello my friends, Don Harris here of Think Red Ink Ministries. Glad to have you again on the Words of Jesus series. Our goal here is to simply reinforce Christianity with the wisdom and the words of our Messiah, Jesus Christ. Which incidentally are recorded in your Bible in red ink. Do you know what Jesus said? Do you know what He did. Do you know what Jesus said?

Do you know what he did? Do you know what he said for us to do? All these kinds of things should be second nature to us. And unfortunately, I'm afraid that we've let them slip. And we just need to be more like him. The best thing I can think to do is to take on and have within us formed the mind of Christ. When we have the mind of Christ, we start to think like he thinks, and we start to talk like he talks, understand

like he understood. And what we're doing at that point is thinking red ink. That's our whole point. We've been talking in our little book, The Words of Jesus, and we now find ourselves in chapter 78. This is where Jesus heals the 10 lepers. We start reading, this is from Luke 17, by the way. Jesus passed through Samaria and Galilee on a journey to Jerusalem. He came to a I want you to notice that it was a matter of them standing afar off and crying out. This was because there was a great distance between them. The reason for the distance? It's simple. They were lepers. They weren't allowed to be anywhere close to society.

There was big concern about their uncleanness. It was a matter of law in that time. And as far as religious purposes are concerned, a priest couldn't get near someone with leprosy without the risk of being unclean, ceremonially unclean. And so the law was specific in how to handle these kinds of things. And some of these men knew about that law. As we continue to read, it says that they

cried out saying, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. Now they could see. I don't know if it was because Jesus happened to stand out in the crowd. I don't think it was because he had a halo or that he looked like a shepherd he was carrying a sheep and a staff with him but for some reason they knew that who they saw afar off was Jesus probably because a little crowd little entourage was following him around which was very very common and as they recognized who it was, they cried out to him to have mercy on them. Jesus hollered back at them and said, Go show yourselves to the priest.

That's an odd way to answer somebody who says, have mercy on us. Oh, go to the people that are going to condemn you to exile. Is that what he was doing? Well, you know, you could think that, but the truth of the matter is that he was speaking to men, and we will find out nine of them were Jews. They grew up in Jewish society. They're fully aware that men with leprosy if they felt like that they did have leprosy

or they were commissioned or hauled into the temple area and brought to the gate of the temple and door of the temple and then met with the priest. The priest's commission was to determine if it is indeed a leprosy. If it was, the priest would declare that person unclean. Well, the converse also is true that if a person were to overcome this disease and feel like that they were

clean, the procedure was very much the same. They would go to the priest and the priest would check them over and see if they indeed had a leprosy or they just had, sometimes they would have skin diseases. And as a matter of fact, the Old Testament lays out ways of finding exactly whether or not these whatever skin disease they have, if it was indeed leprous or not.

Well, it was up to the priest to decide whether or not this was a lepros or not. Well it was up to the priest to decide whether or not this was a leprosy and if a person were cleansed then they would go back to the priest and the priest would declare them clean and they were able if of course they were and they would declare them clean and now all of a sudden this person can have re-entry to society. It was a wonderful thing for that person and for their family, I'm sure. And here Jesus is kind of taking, you know, the cart before the horse here. But when he said to them, go show yourselves to the priest, they could have thought to themselves, well, is he condemning us? Is that what he's doing? Perhaps these men had avoided the priest. Perhaps they had cloistered themselves

for the very purpose of care and just responsibility to society, but they hadn't been actually pronounced unclean. I'm saying this perhaps because we don't know. But Jesus's commission to them was to go and show themselves to the priest. Now, these men decided that, now wait a minute. There's two reasons that a leper goes to a priest. One of them is to be condemned, but the other reason is to be released from that condemnation, from that separation. So, I assume that hope arose in their heart that they would just do what Jesus said to do. I think way back at the wedding of Cana, I think

that Mary was liable to have started a saying throughout Jerusalem. I mean, with her, and they needed wine, and Jesus had offered to help, reluctantly, but he did. And she says, whatever he tells you to do, do it. Well, with that little statement, that little cliche floating around, a blind man who'd had, you know, mud spit put on his, or you call it spit mud, put onto his eyes and then told to go and wash, perhaps it just became understood among the people in those days, if you need something from Jesus, you need to do what he says. Well, can I just pause here for a moment in our story and say, you know, that's darn good advice.

I am constantly amazed by the modern day Christian who doesn't do anything Jesus says, or, you know, precious few things that he has said to do, they do. They're good church people. You know, they go to church regular. You know, they might bathe and wash behind their ears. They don't use ugly language. They don't smoke, they don't drink, they don't chew.

Don't go with girls that do. And they make their grandmothers very proud. And a lot of times when you have a feminized church, those people are held in great esteem. However, it's always amazing to me, people who have that kind of control in their life that they can indeed please their mothers and their grandmothers and their sissified preachers and their church doctrines and those kind of things,

they still don't have what it takes to do what Jesus said to do. And to mimic Jesus' lifestyle. You know, okay. You know, let's think about it just a moment. We're Christians, right? That means that we are essentially little, miniature Christs. That's what we are. We have the seed of Christ growing up in us, um and we're christians supposedly and uh so we should kind of look like he does all right you and jesus sitting on the couch and the sun's going down on friday uh what do you think he's gonna do

what do you think he's going to do tomorrow? What are you going to do tomorrow? Does it look anything like what Jesus did on that day? I'm afraid our lives just don't really look like his. We don't talk like him or act like him. There's just a lot of discrepancies there. Well, those people have, they don't feel any resistance whatsoever to ask Jesus for stuff, to pray and ask God for miracles and do this and do that and be with us and hear our prayer

and fix this and fix that and heal my dog or whatever they think that he's going to do for them. Well, you know, let's just pretend I'm right. Let's just pretend that in Jerusalem it had become cliche. It just became a maxim. It became well known. You want something from that guy? You need to do what he says.

I don't care what he tells you to do. Tells you to go wash in a pool? Tells you to go show yourself to the priest? I mean, what difference does it make? What he tells you to do, do it. Very simple advice. But I'm afraid it's unheeded advice in a lot of cases Jesus commented on this why do you call me your boss and not do what I say all

right so he tells these ten lepers to go and show themselves to the priest now nine of these boys were good Jewish boys that were raised in Jerusalem, and they knew very well the way the law works and the way the priesthood works, and they were very well-versed in these kind of things. But one of these guys was a Samaritan. Now, I think it's interesting also that you remember the woman at the well made the comment to Jesus, why are you asking me for something to drink? Seeing that I'm a Samaritan, seeing that you are a Jew, the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.

Here we're talking about bigotry. Jesus preached on it all the time it was exactly what the story of the man who was beaten by thieves in the samaritan the good samaritan story that we're all familiar with we all believe that that story is jesus telling us that go and do good things. And truth be known, he was teaching us not to be prejudicial, stupid bigots and judge people by what they believe or how they look or where they were born or what their name is, what their DNA is, whether they smoke or drink or any of the rest of the foolish things that we judge people by. In this particular situation, we're dealing with ten lepers who seemingly got along just fine. I wonder what that is. Well, you know what I've noticed is that bigotry and prejudice and these kind of things

fall on one end of the scale or the other. Extreme poverty or extreme affluence. It seems like people who have plenty hate people who don't, and people who don't have hate people who do. And they use any reason whatsoever to hate them. By the way, you know, if you have trouble with prejudice and you happen to be, or at least think you are Christian,, first of all let me tell you there's nothing Christian about prejudice. It's stupid behavior. There's nothing Christian about bigotry. There's nothing that is Christian

about separating one person from another. If you don't have the understanding that we all are of one blood you don't understand Jesus Christ. You don't understand Jesus Christ. You don't understand creation. You don't understand most everything about this Bible. And, you know, the idea of taking scriptures out of the Bible and show that, you know, God thought more of one group of people than he did another.

You know, you're just not well-versed enough in here to make a comment you probably just need to hush and be good to one another and hope that you're not one that's discriminated against by some empty headed bigot and have to suffer those kinds of things but what we need to do is to remove this from our life if you ask God to remove this from your life I don't know if that's a good idea because what i see especially in this story right here lepers don't have this problem

people who are at the bottom people who have been ostracized people that own nothing have nothing and nobody is going to give to them nobody is going to help them they've reached the bottom of the barrel so to speak they don't have these problems can we just learn and love and care for one another without this kind of whipping from our father because if well, I don't know how many people who are bigots that aren't proud that they're bigots. I don't get that. But I think that we should be ashamed when we find these evidences of these things in our life. But if you ask the Lord to help you with this,

don't be surprised if your life doesn't just fall apart. Because it's the people who have nothing who don't have the kind of problems of people who do have something and the resentful people who don't have anything. And so if, and I'm talking about affluence here when I say don't have anything it seems to be that it is money and possessions and those kind of things that cause bigotry I've met some people that don't own anything that love

everybody they meet and they have none of these problems whatsoever. But they don't have resentment either. And it's time that we quit calling this racism and even perhaps bigotry and these kind of things and just call it what it is. It's just hatred. It's just wickedness. It's us trying to be something that we're not

by making people less than we are. If you're involved in this in the least bit, you can't have a person sitting at your table eating dinner with you that's got a little red dot in their forehead. There's something wrong. You can't have a black man be a part of your circle of friends. You can't and if you're black you don't want white people involved in your life you don't want certain religions involved in your life

you don't want people who smell like tobacco smoke to be in your house friend no in the world do you think you are you know we just need to love one another. We've all got problems. Some people stink, you can smell. And some people stink, you smell it a lot later, but it's there. Can we just be good to each other? I think we can. All right, so Jesus decides to heal these people nine of them go all 10 of them go toward the priest but the bible says that the samaritan had something that the other nine didn't have gratefulness and thankfulness and he just couldn't imagine going and seeing the priest. Then coming back to his town and finding out that Jesus was gone.

And he didn't thank him. So he. Forstalled his own healing. And went back to Jesus. Because the Bible says as they went. They were cleansed. See what happens when you do what he says to do? As they went, as they obeyed, as they involved themselves in works, they were cleansed.

Well, they couldn't help but notice. They were looking at each other and saying, you know, you're getting better. They had scabs falling out of the sleeves of their robes. And all of a sudden the pain was going away or at least coming back. I understand that leprosy removes pain. You know, they could tell things were changing in their body. When that happened to this fellow,

he ran back to jesus and said thanks i appreciate that again in the area of bigotry and and prejudice you know i don't know that samaritan might have thought to himself you know i know jesus came to save the jews maybe he thinks i'm one of them it got and i probably got to thinking about it surely he doesn't just think i'm a jew and not know any better my goodness do you think he he he allowed me to be healed even being a samaritan you remember the Syrophoenician woman she tried this she tried getting into that umbrella of of God's power and the anointing and virtue and and wanted healing for her daughter Jesus says sorry sis I can't do it what do you mean you can't do it well i've come to take care of the lost house of israel

i can't well yeah but yeah but yeah no i'm sorry sister it's just i can't do that i came for these people here this was a bad day bad day on jesus's part and a bad day on her part. Now I happen to know within myself and know from the scriptures that his intention as he would eventually become king of Israel and the high priest and these kind of things that through the Jewish nation the entire world would be saved and his power would be indeed available to everyone, but not right now. This woman made a comment to jesus that kind of told the story the scenario that she was seeing being played out in her own mind because jesus says it's not meat it's not good it's not it's not fitting that i should take the food that is meant for the children and cast it to dogs i can't do that everybody hates this story i i understand but for a lot of for a lot of reasons everything had to be said just like it was

i think that he used the word dogs because within this woman's mind you know what she saw she told the story to jesus and said yeah i know i know you don't you don't want to take good food and throw it on the ground but uh don't the dogs eat what falls off the off the master's table don't isn't that what they do well now jesus was so impressed by what she said, and I wonder, why is he so impressed with what she said? You know what she was saying? I know you've come to feed these Jews, but they're not eating.

They're not sitting at your table. They're not here. Your table's not full, as he said in so many of his parables about the feast, the unattended feasts. They're not sitting here. I'm here. I believe in you. No scraps for me.

Jesus said, woman, great is your faith. Go your way. Your daughter's healed. Your faith has made her whole. Now, what is that? What happened there? She actually changed his mind perhaps she just rushed the process a little but yeah she got what she came after and and why why she just wouldn't give up and it and and she knew jesus's mission and who he was and what he was all about. And she saw that you're losing this battle, buddy.

These people aren't listening to you, but I am. And Jesus rewarded her for that. But you can see the prejudice was there. It wasn't prejudice on Jesus' part. That was selectivity because Jesus didn't come on Jesus' part. It was, that was selectivity because Jesus didn't come to save the Jews. I know, I'm sorry. Jesus didn't come to save the Gentiles.

He came to save the Jews. Gentiles don't like hearing that, but it's true. That's what he came, remember when he sent the 70 out? Don't go into Samaria. Just go into the cities of Israel of israel don't go out of this country on under these people was i sent he makes it very very clear but from time to time

samarian slips through and shows faith remember the roman centurion He wasn't even a Samaritan. He wasn't even a Jew. He was a pagan Roman. But as he told Jesus, I know authority when I see it. You obviously got authority, and you don't even have to come to my house. Jesus said to him, great is your faith. You see, what is that? What is it's it's faith that jumps over these boundaries it constantly comes out he told his his disciples he said you know you need you need to understand there's coming a day when the children of abraham and isaac and jacob are all

going to sit down in the kingdom of god people from all over the world are going to be sitting in the kingdom of God. And you yourselves thrust out. That's going to be a sad time. But this prejudice, this was real. This was real. And this Samaritan felt it. He's felt it his whole life. But as long as he was with Jews that were in as bad a shape as he was, everything was fine. They were all buddies.

He might have even considered, you know, when these Jews that get healed and they get back into society, they may go to hating Samaritans again. He might have seen that, you know, this might be the end of my friendship. Don't know what he saw, but I'll tell you what he did feel. The man who healed me does not need to be walked away from and not thanked. Jesus was amazed and shocked and stunned and saddened by that situation. As we read here,

they went and they were healed. One of them, a Samaritan, when he realized that he was healed, returned to Jesus, fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving thanks and glorifying God in a loud voice. Jesus, seeing him, asked, were there not ten cleansed? But where are the nine? And then he said,

there's not found that return to give glory to God save this stranger. You hear that? Stranger of Jerusalem. Nobody would disagree with him there. But I think he was saying this for the people around him. Look at here. There you go.

A stranger. Somebody that you wouldn't even allow in your house. He loves the Lord. He loves me. He's thankful. He's grateful. I think that Jesus was taking these opportunities to show these prejudices and barriers and stuff that we have between us.

They just ought not be. Then Jesus said to the grateful Samaritan, arise, go thy way. Thy faith has made thee whole. Looks like our time is gone already. We're going to continue in chapter 79 next time. I'm glad that you were a part of the show today. And I hope you can take away from it that it'll make your life richer, make your Christianity clearer and clearer, and that this becomes something real to you on a daily basis. It's not something that you watch for a half hour, but something you think about during the day,

and you make changes when you see violations within yourself. Will you do something for me? I need to hear from you. I want you to tell me who you are. And where you are. And how you're listening to the broadcast. Is it radio? Is it TV? What station are you listening to?

I'd love to hear from you. If you have questions. Or if you have comments about the broadcast. I would love to get those as well. It's as simple as writing me an email. Don at ThinkRedredink.com. I'll read them all and I'll be glad to answer whatever questions you have or be of service to you in any way that I can. All right, until next time, think about it. What did Jesus say? Well,

in effect, what he said was what I always tell you. Think red ink, my friend. 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