Words of Jesus Podcast - Fasting or A Hunger Strike

Episode Date: December 3, 2021

"I'll pray about it." A quick phrase or action often used to relieve responsibility. The prayer makes the issue God's problem. Oh, boy. Can we be honest for a change? Fasting is to make us the person we need to be. We need guidance. Since John the Baptist, we are in a new and living way. New wine. New bottle. New covenant. Jesus brought the power [grace] to become a child of God. The new bottle is sound theology. Fantasy and dishonesty cannot contain the grace of God.***CHAPTER 14: JESUS EXPLAINS HIS ATTITUDE ON FASTING (PART 5) THE DISCIPLES of John the Baptist and of the Pharisees came to Jesus, troubled in theirhearts, asking:            “Why do the disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast, but thy disciples fast not?”            “Jesus replied:            “Can ye make the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them?  But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days.            “No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old; if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old.  And no man putteth new wine into old bottles [skins]; else the new wine will burst the bottles [skins], and be spilled, and the bottles [skins] shall perish.  But new wine must be put into new bottles [skins]; and both are preserved.  No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new; for he saith, ‘The old is better’.” ***You will die in your sins - if you don't believe in me; - Jesus taught by example (not teacher/student); 1-2-3; - believe in me; - truth will set you free; son abides forever; fornication; tell you the truth, why do you not believe?; Before Abraham - I AM; immortality - Jesus only hath; first fruits of many brethern, - never see death; - dead, yet shall ye live; - die in sins if doesn't believe that I AM WHO I SAY I AM; never see death of soul, fear Him who can kill both body and soul; wages of sin is death; death is not equal to destruction 

Think Red Ink Ministries presents The Words of Jesus Series with Don C. Harris Hello friends and welcome once again to The Words of Jesus Series. Test. questions, I encourage you, I don't know where you're going to find answers to these questions. I don't know a handful of men that could even formulate questions in these areas because it's not a part of the average Christian's life. And you shouldn't settle for, I'll look into this or I'll pray for you. As a matter of fact, when someone says, I'll pray for you, it's because they're out of cards and they don't know what else to do. And so, you know, if I can't fix this, if I can't help you, I think together we can blame God for this. And so that's the way we do it. We pray about it. And the truth is, is we should have the Word of God within ourselves. We should have the wisdom of God. And if you go to

somebody about certain questions about these things, if they don't have the answer, surely to goodness they know somebody who does. They know somebody who has heard the Word of the Lord on these things. Well, can I save you a whole lot of trouble? Save you a whole lot of gasoline? A whole lot of words over the telephone? Save you a whole lot of trouble? Save you a whole lot of gasoline? A whole lot of words over the telephone? Save you a whole lot of emails? A whole lot of internet study? Look, the truth is, is that we have nothing that wasn't given to us.

And if it wasn't given to us, it's not worth even messing with. It's just man's opinion. Why not take the time that is necessary look in the scriptures. See where these things occur there and what Jesus has to say about them. When it comes to fasting, He says things about fasting in there as if you're going to need to know it. Well if you're not fasting, why do you need to know it? If it's not a part of the Christian's life, then why do you need to know it? Why do you need all this information

if it's not a part of our life? I think it's not a part of our life for several reasons. One of them is it's hugely uncomfortable and we're really into comfort. As a matter of fact, we equate our comfort with the blessing of God. But I think that we've always equated nice things, niceties, comfort, happiness, what we call happiness, what we call joy, what we call prosperity or whatever else. We've equated that with the blessing of God. And guess what? You work hard, save your money, do the right thing, and don't waste your money, and don't be frivolous, and don't be,

you know, prodigal about it. You know what's going to happen? You're going to end up with plenty. Well, that doesn't mean it's a blessing of God. It's just darn good advice. Well, how do you know these other things aren't happening the very same way? Well, you don't, unless you have a relationship with God, and He explains these things to you. And you know way down inside that you know. Many times what the Lord reveals to you, you walk away smiling and you walk away a little lighter than you came. But, wow, for the most part, I can't tell you what he said. I don't know what it was.

I don't know that I can put it into words. That's not uncommon. Because there are no words. Jesus used to wrestle with this. You know, when he got here and found out that we you know, our vocabulary is pretty poor. You know, he's trying to preach to people that don't understand much other than farming. And so he's trying to preach to people that don't understand much other than farming. And so he's having to explain in their vernacular, in their words and vocabulary, things that

wow, he says, well, tell us what the kingdom of God is like. And he's thinking, well, the kingdom of God is like this. And then he'd say, and you know, the kingdom of God is like this. And then he'd say and you know the kingdom of God is like that. And the kingdom of God is, and he kept doing this. And I'm thinking, come on, there's light somewhere. What's the kingdom of God like? Is it like this or like that? The answer is, yes, it is. He was frustrated the very same way that you're going to be frustrated because you're going to

God will speak peace into your heart and you won't even know why but you're going to feel like this situation's handled. It's answered. There's nothing else for me to think about here. There's nothing else for me to worry about. It's all taken care of. Well, how so? I don't know. But I feel that. I feel like everything's going to be okay. I presented this to the Lord two or three days ago. Did you hear his voice? Well, no. I didn't hear

any thunderclaps. There wasn't any noise coming in my ears. Matter of fact, I thought it was, you know, the whole meeting between me and the Father was pretty much uneventful. Wow. And you don't know why you feel like, no, I really don't. Listen, these are the kind of conversations you're going to find yourself having with people, and people are having with you who are deciding to do this. And there's

a lot of people. They're tickled to find out. They're relieved to find out. We can keep the commandments of God? Really, why are you surprised? Look, I've had people look at me and say, I never read them. Well, somebody told you you can't keep them, so you didn't even bother reading them? You can't say that to somebody. But, I mean, that just flies up in me.

Well, you never read them? Or have you ever met the guy that says, you know, I don't know about this whole Christianity thing. I just think that, you know, a person, he keeps the commandments and, you know, that's pretty much all God expects of us. Oh, yeah? Is that how you live? Yeah, that's pretty much what I do. And you think, oh, yeah?

Tell me what they are. What? The commandments. You say you live by them. Big part of your life, obviously. There's a list of them. Ten of them. Can you tell me what they are? Well, you know. Oh, yeah, I know. I'm just wondering if you can tell me what they are.

Well, you know, you don't steal. You don't take your neighbor's wife. You know. Yeah, I know. But this is the list you say you live your life by? Well, yeah, well, what are they? Well, you know, you don't steal, you don't lie, you don't, well, you know. All right. Okay. You live by them. All right, I get it. I am just amazed at how many people live in that

wanton, neglectful, yet acceptable ignorance. I don't get that. I'm not going to tell you, I'm not going to give you my opinion on the Ten Commandments having not read it. I don't think we need to enact a law to find out what's written in it. I think we need to read it. See what it says. Let's decide. Let's see here. Don't steal from my neighbor. Can you do that? Yeah, I think I can do that.

Well then do that. There's one down. Next. It's really just that simple. Keep His commandments. Don't disobey your conscience. Listen for His voice every day. It'll come through for you. Now let's just say that you're having trouble and you're not quite, you're not hearing and you don't have these assurances and these kind of things. Perhaps fasting is what you need to do. Now, do you know the difference?

I don't mean to talk down to anybody here or be condescending at all, but do you know the difference between fasting and a hunger strike? Do you know there's a lot of Christians don't? This is what they do. They ask the Lord for something and then they fast until the prayer's been answered. I don't know if that's wise because that is so much like putting God to the test that it reeks. Now here's what I would advise. I would advise take a day of fasting. Go to the Lord. Take every spare minute of that day and sit before the Lord in quiet. And then, you know, we know that

He hears us. We know that when we ask things according to His will, He hears us. Then get up and go about your way. And if in that fasting day, the Lord says, I want you to fast again tomorrow, do it two days. If you feel within yourself, I think the Lord wants me to fast for three days, do it for three days. But we can't just hold his feet to the fire and say I'm not going to eat anything until you answer my prayer. That's called a hunger strike. That's not going to get you anything.

We need to understand what fasting is for. Fasting is not to prepare God. It's not to prepare the world. It's not to prepare God. It's not to prepare the world. It's not to change anything in particular as far as physical things or to create miracles or to calm storms or walk on water. The vast thing is to make you into the person you need to be, which is the crux of your problem.

It's not that God's hand is shortened that he can't save. It's your sins that separate between you and God. We need to fix that. Why can't we fix that? Of all the things in the whole universe, I don't care if you're talking about politics or religion. I don't care if you're talking about the way things are in the Middle East or the way things are in China or the way things are in the jungles of Africa and all the troubles, there is nothing in the world more important to you than getting you where you need to be. I admire you if you're sending

money to feed children overseas. That's wonderful. But for me, the most important thing is to make me in the right situation with my father so that I hear his voice. You know, it'd really be nice to hear from him about, hey, don't send that group money. And find out six months later that they absconded with $4.5 billion and never fed anybody. Oh, yeah, it happens. You know darn well it happens.

But wouldn't it be nice to have been guided in that area? So what's more important? What's more important? It's guidance, is it not? Now, in order to close out this particular time that we talk about another aspect of fasting that Jesus talked about when he said that we have to be very careful about taking an idea from our religious past, the rites and rituals

and things that we did for so many years because you understand this is a new covenant. John the Baptist's whole message was behold, something new is coming. We're all going to have to change. We're all going to have to turn around and not go that way anymore, but go this way. This was his whole purpose. Jesus talked about it. They all talked about it.

This is a new and living way. And Jesus is saying you need to be very careful because when I'm talking about fasting and prayer and meditation, these kind of things, you're going to have a tendency to want to apply what you've always known these things to be to your life, which I think is probably better than not applying them, but he's warning us, and here's the way he puts it, you don't put new wine into old bottles. Now, we've all heard this, hopefully. Your preacher preaches from the red words.

But we don't put new wine into old bottles. Why? Because the wine, its purpose, its intention, its very near future is going to involve incredible pressures that an old wineskin will not be able to take. And what's going to happen is you're going to find that those bottles, those old wineskins are going to explode. He says that if you do this here's the sad part. You're not only going to lose the wine

you're going to lose the bottle too. You're going to lose it all. It's all going away. Well you know as I was reading this I was thinking okay fine, okay fine. I'll try not to do that. Thank you sir for that information. And then I'm thinking so what do we do? How do we do this? And what does he expect us to do? Well he goes on to explain it to us. He says new wine has to be put into new bottles. New bottles? But you're talking about an old concept like fasting.

But it's a new bottle now. It's a new bottle now. Jesus talked about fasting in that when the 70 couldn't cure that poor guy's son. And he said this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting. And how relieved they must have been to have felt, oh my goodness, this is just something I didn't know? Tell me what I don't know! And that's how that is not a common response for many Christians.

If the Lord or anybody tells them something that they don't know, they will either pretend like they do know it, or they'll try to hold on to what they've always believed and what they always thought was indeed the truth. And it just seemingly goes nowhere. What a shame. People walk away the same way they walked up. Just as I am is just as I was is just as I'm going to be.

Well, how sad is that? No, the new wine has to be put into new bottles. Great example of this, by the way, is the concept that when Moses came, the Bible says he brought the law. When Jesus came, he brought two things with him. Remember what they were? Grace and truth. Now, people say that grace existed in the Old Testament. No, it didn't. How can you say that? Because he said he brought

it when he came. How could it have been here, yet he brought it? I happen to believe what the Bible says. Yeah, but the word grace isn't, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. In those days I understand unmerited favor. I don't understand the unmerited part, but I do understand the favored part. Noah found favor in the eyes of God. Noah found mercy in the eyes of God. But that's not grace.

That's not the grace that Jesus brought. You know what you're trying to do? You're trying to store new wine in an old bottle. So you take the word grace and you think, hmm, is this the new wine? Well, indeed it is. But so if we're going to understand grace, let's see if we can understand it in the context of the old bottle. What's the old bottle?

Favor, mercy. That's pretty much all there is to it. Well, here's the problem. If you take that and apply it to the New Testament grace, it robs it of all of its power, that it is offering every person who received him the power to become a child of God. Noah did not have the power to become a child of God.

Certainly he could be an obedient man. Certainly he could be safe and essentially saved from destruction. Certainly he could have had a communicative relationship between him and the Father. Sure he could have had a communicative relationship between him and the Father. Sure he could have. But being regenerated? No, he didn't have that. He didn't have it. Neither did a whole lot of people in the Old Testament. So was grace really in the Old Testament? Why no, it wasn't. No, it wasn't at all. How did we get to thinking

that it was? We took the new wine and put it into an old bottle. So, Don, what does he tell us to do? He tells us to take the new wine and put it into new bottles. What's the new bottle? Friend, without a whole lot of explanation, without going through the excruciating challenge that I had of going through the scriptures two or three times to put this together

so that I could understand what I'm telling you now. And by the way, I don't mean for you to just take my word for this. I think you should search this out as diligently as I did. Let it become your own. Let the Lord reveal this to you. But friend, the new bottle, it's solid theology. It's solid theology. It's the elimination of fables and our Santa Claus God and our sheep-toting Jesus and all the silly little

ideas we have. Angels on our shoulder and whispering in our ear and grandma and grandpa peeking over the balconies of heaven and all the silly stuff. Going fishing with Jesus and playing checkers with God and talking about I'll ask him questions and he'll tell me why in the by and by and all the rest of the ridiculous and checkered and silly, fabulistic past of our Christianity, that'll never hold.

It will never contain the powerful grace of God that has been bestowed upon us and given to us and offered to us to make us into children of God. So it's a cleaning of our theology. If the Bible doesn't say it, why are we saying that? If the Bible doesn't say it, why are we saying that? If the Bible doesn't teach it, why are we teaching that? And do I really have to go through the Bible and give you 35 scripture references? Now turn over

here to page whatever, or to this verse or to that verse. Now look over here and carry you through all this stuff, all this convoluted thinking and you pick up a word and in some cases even a letter from this verse and it goes to this verse and you add it all together and it becomes, gee whiz what I and my dad and my grandpa and my grandma and the preacher down the road and everybody in seminary has always said, isn't that

amazing? We've been right all along. No, that's not amazing. That's not amazing at all. You can take Moby Dick and take words out of it and prove doctrine to be true. All you got to do is believe Moby Dick's inspired. That's not hard to do. I don't even know of any contradictions in Moby Dick. Anyway, what I'm saying is that we better take this seriously. We better take the theology seriously. Can you imagine sitting at your table tonight and saying, you know what? I'm not going to use that word anymore.

It's a good, wholesome word. It's a spiritual word. It's a liturgical word. It's a church word. Preacher says it all the time. Whatever it is. I don't want to get your mind off on something so that you're not listening to what I say. So I'm not going to pick a particular word that we use. But we have a description here and I'm not going to use that word anymore. Why? The Bible doesn't say it. It doesn't use that word. Why would I use that word? I don't know what that means. The Bible obviously doesn't know what it means.

It's not in there. It's not described. It's not defined. It's not even necessary. Why do I use that word? Because everybody else does. Well, what does Susie think that word means? Let's call her and ask her. What does Bob think it means? Let's call him and ask him. Let's talk to Steve and let's talk to Marsha and let's talk to... You know what you're going to find? Because the Bible didn't define that word. Because the Bible doesn't use that word, they all have weird ideas.

Or they all have what is called the private interpretation. What's the private interpretation? You know that scripture that says that we know that the Bible, or at least the scriptures, are of no private interpretation? And people use that scripture to say, see there, you're not allowed to translate this yourself. It's got to be done by the Spirit of God. No, you have totally missed that scripture altogether. As a matter of fact, it's teaching the opposite.

Private interpretation means singular interpretation. It's of no singular interpretation. No one man or group of men or seminary or church or preacher or Sanhedrin or anybody anywhere can take a verse of Scripture and say that's what that means. You're not allowed to do that. You know what that is? That's a private, that's a singular interpretation of that word. You don't have the right to do that.

Well, if we don't define these words, everybody's going to believe something different. Friend, they already believe something different. Just because they go to you and make your little confession or do the responsive readings or whatever at the end of the sermon or whatever they do, sign on the dotted line, ascribe to your doctrine, your articles of faith. I really think that if you could hear in their minds when they're writing, sign here that you agree with these articles of faith. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because it doesn't mean anything to them. It doesn't mean anything to them because frankly it doesn't mean anything. It's just made up words. But we have taken those words and said ascribe to this or you're out of the picture. You're out of the club. You got no friends here. You can't even be a part of what we're doing. And chances are, you're going to hell to boot. This is Jesus Christ's Christian church on the earth doing this. Unbelievable that we would do such a thing.

But we do. So where's our new skin, our new wine skin, our new bottle to hold the wonderful work that God has done by sending his son to the earth to live among us, put pants on the scripture for us, show us how this is to be done, give us the power to become a son of God. What is that bottle?

You know what it is? It's sound theology. It's sound theology. It's sound doctrine. I'm sorry, is that boring to you? I can't help it. But you know without sound doctrine and without sound theology, there is no place to put these new things. It doesn't make any sense. But boy, when you've got it, it does make make sense when you have a container to put this stuff it's it starts to make sense and it starts to fall into order and it starts

making very very clear sense to you you want to be a jewish christian you got troubles you want to be a baptist christian you've got serious. You want to be a Pentecostal Christian? Even more so. You want to be a David Koresh Christian? Doubly so. You want to be a Seventh-day Adventist Christian? You've got troubles. You've got troubles.

You've got an old wineskin that was just created from parts of another, of another, of another, of another. We've never received anything from God. We don't even know how to contain it. We don't know what to do with it. We don't know how to interpret it. We don't know how to put genes on it and present it to our fellow man. Why is that?

Our doctrine stinks. It's full of illogical thought It's full of fables and mysteries And ethereal platitudes that don't mean anything And old sayings and cliches And little trite sentences that we stick on every situation That's not a living way That's not a new and living way. That's just a hodgepodge of all the other stuff that we've just gathered up over the years. Man, it's time to

flush this stuff and start over. Does that scare you to death? I don't mean to scare you, but frankly, I've met some of you, and you ought to be scared. You ought to be seriously worried about your theology and whether or not it's going to suffice in these end times. End times are coming. Strong delusion coming on the earth. How are you going to fight it? Cliches? Maxims?

Trait sayings? Is that what you you got in mind? No, friend, not gonna work. It's not gonna work. You know what you need? You need the new wine and you need the new bottle. And you're gonna be able to face anything because you're hearing the voice of God.

You know exactly where these things go and where they belong and what they mean. You know. How do you know? You took time to figure it out, which puts you into an entirely separate category of most Christians. All right, time is gone. I want to hear from you. Let us know who you are, where you're listening, that kind of thing. I'd love to hear from you. So you can send an email to me personally, Don, at thinkredink.com. Or you can write to Think Red Ink Ministries if you want to be a part of what we're doing.

That's P.O. Box 718, Pytown, New Mexico, 87827. Thank you so much. And we're going to see you the next time around. Until then, remember, Think Red, Inc. Bye-bye. You've been listening to Don C. Harris of Think Red, Inc. Ministries. Email don at thinkredinc.com. That's thinkredc.com. That's ThinkRedInc.com. Join us again for the next episode in the Words of Jesus series. you