Words of Jesus Podcast - Don't Ask Why or Say Because - Keep the Commandments

Episode Date: April 30, 2021

The synagogue was the place where the Torah was read to the people. Everyone did not have a Bible. John's life was almost over and the ministry of Christ stepped-up, "...the time is fulfilled..." The thoughts of Jesus can only be imagined as he wondered how his message would be received. The anointing of the Spirit of God was evident and overwhelming. Repentance. The Kingdom of God brought change. The message was welcomed to those in need; and rejected by those in power.This is a big day. The tension in the room was palpable. The truth spoken was overwhelming. Jesus, in the flesh, "...never a man spake like this man." ***Jesus and His Message Rejected at Nazareth (Part 3)HEARING that John had been cast into prison, Jesus returned to Galilee. He began to preach the gospel of God in the synagogues, saying:            “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent ye, and believe the gospel.”           His fame was spread through all the regions round about.            Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been reared, and went to the synagogue on the Sabbath, as was his custom. He stood up and read from the book of the prophet Isaiah, were it was written:           “’The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised; to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.’”           All eyes fastened on him as he began to preach, saying:           “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.”           Many of those present were bewildered, and others were awe-inspired. They questioned among themselves.           “Is this Joseph’s son?”           Others hearing him were astonished. They said:           “From whence hath this man these things? And what wisdom is this which is given unto him, that even such mighty works are wrought by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Judas, and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?           And they were offended at him.           Jesus continued, saying:           “Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, ‘Physician, heal thyself. Whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country.’ But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah, when then Heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land. But unto none of them was Elijah sent, save unto Sarepta, a city Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And many the lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian.”     

Think Red Ink Ministries presents The Words of Jesus Series with Don C. Harris Hello friend, welcome once again to the Words of Jesus series. I hope you're enjoying this series. I love doing this. This is actually, you know, going through and reading the red words of Christ actually happened to me because I got fascinated with the questions of Jesus. I went through the scriptures and found every question that he ever asked and

decided to write them down and contemplate them and consider them in meditation and in prayer. And from that, by the way, that was about a four-year endeavor of my personal devotions. From that came the book, The Questions of Jesus. If you'd like to have a copy of that, you can find that on Amazon or Books A Million or Barnes & Noble, all the internet bookstores. Just type in Questions of Jesus, Don C. Harris. There are two books up there.

One is a hardback edition and one is a paperback edition. So you might want to get one that you don't care if you spill coffee on. And the other one is just such a handsome book. It's our 15-year anniversary edition of that book. And so we put it in hardback, and it differs from the paperback. One great way that the hardback edition differs is that it's red letter.

And any time we hear the Lord saying something or something's being quoted from the Scripture that the Lord Jesus said we put that in red ink in that book. So it's impressive in a lot of ways, but I just am so proud of that book. And we get such wonderful reviews or people say that they just can't live without it. Just received a phone call from somebody who said, I've worn mine out. The spine's busted on it.

Are these guaranteed? And of course we had a laugh over that and we've sent him another one since then. But if you'd like to have a nice daily of course we had a laugh over that and we've sent him another one since then. If you'd like to have a nice daily devotional the questions of Jesus, although it does contain 151 questions that Jesus asked while he was here on the earth and is over 500 pages long it deals with each question individually. So each one of the questions

is 10 or 12 minutes reading. It makes a great devotion. If you get that book, let me know you got it and I can get you an MP3, 26 hours of that book as an audio book that you can put into your car and listen to on your way to work or whatever. Anyway, I'd love to make that available to you. As a matter of fact, I make available to everyone everything that we have at Think Red Ink Ministries.

If anything you see, we've got an online catalog that you can look through and see if something appeals to you. We deal with all different kinds of subjects, most of which are of spiritual nature. And I mean not legalistic or educative types of classes. We do do classes, but

mostly what I have found is that what really changes people is the infusion into their life of the Holy Spirit. And that's what we're trying to accomplish. And I don't care what your denomination is or your faith or what your family believed or anything else. You are a candidate for having the Spirit of God come and be a part of your life and lead you and guide you into all truth. There is nothing, you'll hear me say it a hundred times

if you listen to TRI radio or Think Reading TV, you'll hear me say it over and over again. There is nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing more important to anyone on the face of this planet, nothing more important than guidance. You know when you are, when you have confidence that the Lord is guiding you and helping you along do you know there just isn't anything that can happen that can shake you? But boy, if you doubt that in the least little bit,

if you doubt that he does lead you and guide you, and in fact he's not leading you and guiding you because you've not made whatever provisions that he has said is prerequisites to that guidance? Man, I don't know how you live from day to day. I really don't know how you make it. I guess insurance policies? Listening to positive thinking motivational people? I don't know how you do it. I can't. I guess perhaps I've

not wanted to and I haven't for so long that I'm just not even willing to. But I wouldn't take anything in the world for whatever few minutes I have in the day to just say, Lord is there anything for me? Do you have anything for me? And just be quiet before Him and let Him speak. I tried to say in the last show I wanted to give you an encounter that I had where He re-revealed is that a word? He revealed to

me the Ten Commandments as prophecies and not necessarily as rules. And if you missed that show you should get it in podcast or rerun or however you can get it because it's important that we know this. But many times even if he takes that kind of time with us and teaches us and His intention is to guide us, we have

something inside us that makes us doubt those things and I think that the quicker these revelations come to us, the more doubt people have about them. Which, really friend, you should. Because there's just a whole lot of times that you go before the Lord for Him to speak to you, and you don't perceive it. You don't know it. I've had people write to me and say, you know, I tried that being quiet before the Lord thing

and He never said nothing. I don't believe that. You know, first thing I'm asking Him is are you keeping His commandments? Well, I try. Well, when you do keep them, He said that He would come into you and manifest himself to you. Well, I didn't hear nothing. I said, well, you know, a lot of times I don't either. But as demand is placed on my life to make the right decision, to do the right thing, to go the right direction, to speak to the right person in the right way at the right time

and, you know, to speak to the right person in the right way at the right time and you know to just to be effective in life when demand is placed upon that. What I find is that it's there to my surprise. Probably planted in my spirit back in the time that I was seeking the Lord and got up there thinking He didn't say nothing to me. But we just need to yield ourselves more and not be so bloody demanding

when it comes to the way we feel about our God. We were reading in the book Jesus and His message rejected at Nazareth and we didn't get very far because he started out talking about John. He said that John had been cast into prison and Jesus returned to Galilee and he began to preach the gospel of God in the synagogue saying

the time is fulfilled. Now when it talks about the time being fulfilled this is a remark of the proportion of that we are standing at a marker in time. It's pretty much what Jesus was saying here. We're standing at this particular point. We are

at a certain marker of time that is important. Now John the Baptist's life has closed, his ministry's closed, the prophecies have closed, and let's just look back at everything he's had to say and let's put it into one concise sentence. And he does that by saying the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the gospel. We talked about the definitions of the gospel.

Good shows just prior to this I don't know, I hope it's not better than this one. But if you want to I would suggest you find those previous shows because we talked about a lot of very, very important things. Let's move on through this story here. His fame was spread throughout all regions about. Jesus came to Nazareth where he had been reared

and went to the synagogue on the Sabbath, as was his custom. He stood up and read from the book of the prophet Isaiah. Now let me say, just adding in here real quickly, because it's well known, people who know me in this ministry know that the Sabbath is very, very important to me and I preach it as a very important aspect of our relationship to God. I don't think that it's changeable.

I don't think that it's maneuverable. I don't think that we can make it more palatable by changing whatever day it is or whatever we define as work or define as this way. We do this all the time with God's commandments. Can you put a parenthesis inside a parenthesis? If you can then I want to do that right here. Don't ever find yourself asking why. Don't ever find yourself asking why.

Don't ever find yourself applying because to a commandment of God. Because if you do you're going to find yourself trying to fulfill it in some other way. I gave an example one time of somebody says, God told us not to eat pork because of trichinosis. Now okay that might, okay fine. I see what you're saying. And God doesn't want us to be poisoned.

Or didn't want us to die of some kind of food poisoning. Yeah I get that. But he doesn't seem to have any trouble with us eating the nastiest animal alive, which is a chicken. But the problem with adding because to the commandment of God is that someone would say, well, if God doesn't want us to eat pigs because of trichinosis, well, here's the good news.

We've defeated that with pharmaceuticals. It's not a problem. And so people say, God wanted us to keep the Sabbath because he wanted us to rest one day in seven. So it can be Monday and about Thursday. Just make it whatever day you want. Can you do that? How do we get to the point where we're trying to make this decision? By using the word because when it comes to a

commandment. God doesn't want us to commit adultery because of sexually transmitted diseases. Well, we've got pharmaceuticals. We've got penicillin. So I guess we don't have to obey that commandment anymore. God doesn't want us to murder because it causes widows and orphans, but now they have multi-million dollar insurance policies so it's actually better for them. I don't know! How do we get to where we

start changing what God has clearly outlined He wants us to do? Because we want to do whatever that is, and we're going to try to justify it. One of the best ways to justify your behavior is to add the word because to a commandment of God. Close those parentheses get back to the other one. What in the world was it? Well, the when we go to talking about Sabbath day, people know that I keep the Sabbath and that I believe that it is important.

And I think that it's not a Christian or a Jewish thing. It's just an eternal thing. It's part of the commandments that Jesus said would never pass away. That being said, I have a lot of people that will in agreeance of what I'm saying, they will carry it to the nth degree. I'm so disappointed with the Seventh-day Adventist for not seeing as clearly as it is written in Scripture that seeing as clearly as it is written in Scripture that when they took on the initiative of

worshiping on Sabbath, they just took everything that was done on Sunday and now they do it on Saturday. And I'm thinking is that the commandment? Is that what they want us to do? Is this what the scriptures want us to do? Is that what God wants us to do? Is this why he wrote, keep the Sabbath day? The objection people would have toward the Sabbath day would be, well, I think we should worship God every day. Well, I do too!

But this has nothing to do with worship. He says you'll rest on the Sabbath day. Doesn't say worship. People ask me all the time, you know if you had a little church out there at Pytown, would you keep it on Sabbath or on Sunday? I said it'd be on Sunday. That's when we'd have our services. You're not messing up my Sabbath with a bunch of church business. And because we try to keep the commandment. The commandment is, work six days, rest the

seventh. There's nothing about going to church or any of the rest of that busyness that just clogs up the entire day. Everybody knows this. But they say, well Jesus as we read here, Jesus went to the temple every Sabbath. Look, that is not going to church! He didn't go to church on Sabbath. He went downtown to the synagogue which is not a church, by the way.

A synagogue, I mean a church has a church building. A synagogue is nothing more than town hall. It never has been anything else. Now it has a religious connotation. Now the Jewish faith call certain buildings synagogues and such as that, but it's actually a Greek word that means it's a town hall. It's a place where, well, literally I think in Greek it means where people all get together. So when it says that Jesus went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day as was His custom, why was it the custom?

Well, you spoiled rotten American that has six Bibles in your house, that wasn't always the case. It was only the rich, the very rich among us that was able to have a Bible, able to have the Scriptures. So, what did they do? Well on Sabbath day the men would go down to the synagogue and they would read Scripture. Because other than that there's no other way for the people to receive these Scriptures. That's what they did. But they didn't go down there and sing just a little talk with Jesus. No, no, no.

So even the Sabbath, people who don't keep it and people who do just don't seem to get their cues out of the scriptures. What do you want me to do here? But I think a lot of times we just say what we've heard everybody else say. Pro, con, for, against. You know, I'm with you, I'm against you. It doesn't really even matter. We just pretty much say what we hear other people say. Hey, do me and yourself a big favor and think for yourself. Alright. So he goes in there as was his custom and he

stood up to read from the book of the prophet Isaiah. I understand this was a custom among the Jews. I think did you have to be? No, I don't think there was an age requirement. But you could be asked to read from the scrolls. Which would just take in anybody. But this particular day it was Jesus' turn and I don't know if they read

these scriptures in order, or they read them from what's understood to be like a parchote. I don't know what it was, but whether it was parchote, which was the... they would lay down in order what scriptures would be read on what day. Or it was just reading in a linear fashion the book of Isaiah or the entire scriptorium of scrolls. I don't know. But it just so happened

and I think it's interesting that it just so happened that Jesus and Isaiah's prophecy about his ministry coincided on that day. And he stood up to read. He looked down and he saw this prophecy and he thought, oh my. Oh my. I've got to say this in front of these people? This is amazing.

And I'm sure as he sat there and thought about it he thought, there's no way that I'm going to be able to preach this or read this without preaching it. How am I going to say this and be coy about it? I don't know how I'm going to do this. This is going to be big. I'm sure this stuff is going through his mind as he's looking at this scripture. And he's getting ready to read this because he's about to read a prophecy, you know, hundreds

of years prior written about him, about his ministry, that he's about to walk out of that building and start. And he's looking at this scripture and he's thinking of the chances of him and this scripture coinciding here at the lectern in the synagogue on the Sabbath day in front of all the religious leadership. And I can just see him kind of a sarcastic smirk and saying to himself, thanks dad. This is going to be great fun.

Here's what was written by the prophet Isaiah. The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach the gospel to the poor, he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and the recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

It goes on to say, All eyes were fastened upon him as he began to say, all eyes were fastened upon him as he began to preach, saying, this day, this scripture is fulfilled in your ears. He wanted them to know this is not just a big day for me, guys. This is a big day for you. Don't know how it happened,

but it happened. Here, I'm reading my own prophecy to you. Why were all eyes fastened on him? These people had sat there and listened to scripture being read over that lectern for years, their entire life. You know they've heard that scripture over and over and over again. I think his glory was leaking that day. I think that there was something leaking out of him.

I think that this was not just a reading on this day. I think that they got upset and I think their eyes were fastened on him for a reason. And I think that reason is that it was evoking from him the power of God on his life to accomplish everything he read right there. And as he filled with that glory, I think

it was leaking. I think it was visible. I think something was different about what was going on. And as they sat there unable to catch their own breath, he looked out at them and said, you're not mistaking this feeling. You're not mistaking your understanding of what you see and hear. This scripture is fulfilled in your ears.

You are hearing this scripture being read by the very person it was written about. This was, I know I'm adding words here, but there are things that are being said here that aren't being said with words. And you have to understand the tension in that room must have been incredible because it was just obvious that the words that were written, the words that were being read were about that person who's saying them now.

There was a time when they were trying to accuse Jesus and they sent people out to try to catch him in his speech. To try to accuse him of wrongdoing. They said just go and watch him and listen to what he says. And they did, and they came back to report. Their heads are kind of down, and they're kind of looking around and looking at each other like, are you going to tell them,

or am I going to tell them, or who's going to tell these people what needs to be said? Well, what happened? What's going on? They said, never a man spake like this man. You know, we've seen a lot of insurrectionists. We've seen a lot of Zionists. We've seen a lot of nutty religious people. This isn't one of them. This isn't one of them. This man's speaking from some place inside him

of knowing. He's speaking of things that we know he can't know, but he does know. It's so impossible for him to know that we should doubt everything he says, yet we don't doubt it. It makes

perfect sense. And they would say things about him like, how knoweth this man letters having never learned? How does this man know how to read these scriptures he wasn't in my class another member of the Sanhedrin looks over at another rabbi and says was he in your class? wasn't in my class how does he do this? I'll tell you how he does this

you're talking about the son of God here you're talking about somebody Son of God here. You're talking about somebody who came with so much power at his disposal. He says, I'll give this to anybody who will receive me. And you can become a child of God. Is time gone already? My goodness. Join us next time to hear more from the words of Jesus.

I want to hear from you. Would you write me an email? You can tell me I'm wonderful or tell me I'm a nut. It's okay. Don at thinkredink.com or you can write to Think Red Ink Ministries at P.O. Box 718, Pytown, New Mexico 87827. Take a look at our website thinkredink.com. Let us know how we can help you. Bye-bye for now. You've been listening to Don C. Harris of Think Red Ink Ministries. Email don at thinkredink.com. That's thinkredc.com. That's ThinkRedInc.com. Join us again for the next episode in the Words of Jesus series. you