Words of Jesus Podcast - Forgiveness Requires Forgiveness

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

The parables of Jesus reveal the character and nature of His Father. God hired laborers of many nationalities to work in His vineyard. His offer of grace and forgiveness was extended beyond the people of Israel. The mission of Jesus changed because He was rejected by the religious leaders of Israel. The ambiguous language of the Scripture, the reading by Jesus of the scripture in Isaiah was cut short, the people were not willing to accept the authority of Jesus. ***85: Jesus Tells A Story Of Some Workmen In A VineyardMatthew 20:1-16When Jesus had finished his discussion of the difficulties in the path of a rich man entering into the kingdom of God, he told another parable, saying:            “For the kingdom of Heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, which went out early in the morning to hire laborers into his vineyard. And when he had agreed with the laborers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the marketplace.And said unto them, ‘Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you.’ And they went their way. Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise. And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, ‘Why stand ye here all the day idle?’ They say unto him, ‘Because no man hath hired us.’ He saith unto them, ‘Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive.’So when evening was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, ‘Call the laborers, and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first.’ And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny. But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny. And when they had received it, they murmured against the good man of the house, saying, ‘These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day.’ But he answered one of them, and said, ‘Friend, I do thee no wrong. Didst not thou agree with me for a penny? Take that thine is, and go thy way. I will give unto this last, even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?’ So the last shall be first, and the first last. For many be called, but few chosen.”86: Jesus Again Predicts His DeathMatthew 20:17-19; Mark 10:32-34; Luke 18:31-34As they were on the way to Jerusalem, Jesus went on ahead by himself. His followers, going behind him, were surprised and disappointed at his leaving them. Jesus called his disciples to him and began to tell them the things that would happen to him, saying:            “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem and the Son of man shall be delivered unto the chief priests, and unto the scribes; and they shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver him to the Gentiles. And they shall mock him, and shall scourge him, and shall spit upon him, and shall kill him; and the third day he shall rise again.”            But the disciples did not understand what he was trying to tell them.

Think Red Ink Ministries presents the Words of Jesus series with Don C. Harris. Hello my friend, welcome once again to the Words of Jesus series. I am so glad to be here, and I hope you're enjoying the series. You know, a lot of shows are weekly shows, and we're really not used to daily things. But, you know, our shows are new every day, and so I'd really like you to be a part of everything that we're doing here we are our intention is to make these kinds of things available to you by way of the internet and those kind of things are in the works but if you do happen to miss a show check the schedule of your station and see if you can find the time that it's available

or perhaps we can make these things available to you because you don't need to miss a word you don't need to miss not one little red word of what jesus has to say we've been talking from the words of jesus book and today we're moving into chapter 85, where Jesus tells the story of a workman in a vineyard. Let's begin reading. When Jesus had finished his discussion of the difficulties of the path of a rich man entering the kingdom of heaven, that was last time, he told another parable, saying,

For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, That was last time. he sent them into his vineyard and he went out about the third hour and saw others standing idle in the marketplace and he said unto them go ye also into the vineyard and whatsoever is right i will give you and they went their way and again he went out the sixth and the ninth hour and did likewise and about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing around idle and saith unto them why stand you here all the day idle and they say unto him because no man has hired us he said unto them go ye also into the vineyard saith unto his steward, Call the laborers and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first. And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny.

But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received more. And they likewise received every man a penny. And when they had received it, they murmured against the good men of the house, saying, These have wrought but one hour and thou hast made them equal unto us which have borne the burden in the heat of the day but he answered one of them and said friend i do thee no wrong didst thou not agree with me for a penny take that as thine go thy way i'll give unto this last even as unto thee is it not lawful for me to do as i will with mine own is thine i evil because i'm good so the last shall be first and the first last, for many be called and few chosen.

This particular parable has been used in a lot of different ways. And one of the ways that it seems to be used in many cases is the we talked about this last time as a matter of fact, is the equality of reward. And it doesn't matter, you know, I've heard people say you know, you ask Jesus into your heart or whatever unscriptural ideas they have about salvation. Ask Him into your heart that when you stand up from praying, you are as much in Christ as a man who's been in Christ for 40 years.

Well, I don't know. First of all, I don't know why you're saying that to anybody. And second, wow, that is so far from from the truth i don't know if that's just not a lie i don't even know why you're saying it why are you saying that to somebody you know what i grew up in a church who talked like that and believed like that and i remember um you know even as a teenager thinking wow is this really all there is is this what salvation is just forgiveness for my sin i found myself in the place of that of that young ruler that we talked about last time it really this is it i just. In his case, he was keeping the commandments, but I was taught that even if you break the commandments,

and you can't help breaking them because everybody sins every day, that you can just ask Jesus to forgive you and he'll do it. And so I was thinking, so that's what salvation is. Just forgiven for your sins. Christians aren't perfect. They're just forgiven. Oh, by golly, they ought to be perfect. Especially when we understand that perfect means complete.

Wouldn't that be a great bumper sticker? Christians aren't complete. They're just forgiven. You know, it just doesn't seem to have the impact. But no, there's nothing further from the truth than that christians need to be complete and um and the idea that you have been forgiven uh well i mean you know if you take that to uh you know the the theological conclusions that the Bible does, forgiven of what? What have you been forgiven for?

You see, there is an idea that because God has decided not to consider your sin, that you've been forgiven. That's not true at all. As a matter of fact, we read the story where jesus um uh is telling the story about the man who uh could uh was in trouble with the king and he owed him money that he couldn't pay and the king says throw him in jail and uh you know throw his put his wife into slavery and his kids into the into the workhouse. And he says, now wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

He says, have mercy on me and I'll pay thee all. You remember this? And the king forgave him that debt. I figured it out one time. It seemed like it was like $13 million. It was some ridiculous amount of money. He could have never paid it. And after he, you know, goes running out of the courtroom,

skipping and laughing and hopping and lighting a big stogie cigar, he was happy, boy, he was forgiven. Well, it occurred to him, hmm, you know old Bob over there, he owes me 20 bucks, I ought to go to him. I just spent my last dollar on this cigar So if I need to go to him and see if he can give me that 20 bucks he owes me he asked him Yeah, and that's what it came out to about 20 bucks And he asked him and he says I don't have it. You don't have it You're gonna pay me that money and he took him by the throat

Pay me that money. And he took him by the throat. Pay me that thou owest. And the guy says, you know, I can't pay. Well, the people saw this happen. They all knew this guy was $13 million in debt. And by now, because of the, you know, the grin on his face and the cigar smoke, they figured, uh-oh, this guy's been forgiven of his debt and now he's out doing collections. So they go to the king and they tell the king, hey, that guy you forgave of all that money, he's out there choking

a guy right now for 20 bucks. What? Yes, he's out there choking this poor kid trying to get his money out of him bring him in here okay now what's going to happen you know the story he's going to bring him in and if this guy was indeed forgiven if it if it wasn't really on the books anymore you know they say that god just erases these sins you know you hear these little stories where you know you go before the lord on judgment day and you say forgive me for doing so and so and he says i can't even remember what you've done it's all been erased it's all you know you've heard the stories. Well, friend, let me tell you something. Until Judgment Day, you know, God can do whatever he wants to do, but there's a record.

Do you realize that you're probably going to owe your sin death the rest of your existence for all eternity? You know, being forgiven of a sin is not having it erased it's not having it eradicated it's not what do they call that when they when they pretend like something never happened uh in in in the courtroom situation the word escapes me now but it's not a matter of having it expunged. There's the word. Of having it expunged from the record. There is a record.

You don't believe that? Well, when this guy comes back before the king, and he says, you wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt, and you couldn't have mercy on one of your fellow servants? Do you know what that king did? He reinstituted the debt of that man. I guess kings can do that.

I know, we're Americans. We got rights. But you have to understand, this isn't the democracy of God. This isn't the democratic republic of heaven. This is the kingdom of God. He is a king. He can do as he wishes. He is sovereign. And if he decides to forgive you your debt, then he's decided to forgive you. If he decides to erase that forgiveness and recall that debt, he can do that too.

Boy, this really blows once saved, always saved out of the water. But it needs to be. The truth of the matter is, Jesus made this very clear. You say, well, I think you're misapplying the scriptures. Okay. You want to continue talking about what Jesus said after this story? So shall my heavenly father do unto you if you from your hearts do not forgive everyone their transgressions their sins their

debts that's exactly what he's going to do to you you want to see your sins again they're on record and by the way they're never paid for i know we have the the cliche that jesus's blood paid for our sins but they didn't jesus's blood's atoned for our sins but what we're looking forward to is forgiveness if you don't understand the difference chances are you've never been forgiven yourself. Chances are you've never forgiven anybody. Forgiveness is not just stupidly forgetting what somebody did. It's not purposefully forgetting what somebody did. I don't even know, can you purposely forget? I guess over a period of time you could forget. If you do forget, it's a gift from god i think if you have forgiven but uh forgiveness is i know you owe me i understand you owe me you owe me big but i forgive you

is that hard to believe is that hard to fathom it's hard to to to swallow down. You know what's even more difficult? It's hard to bring that up. It's hard to practice that if you haven't experienced it. But boy, when you've been forgiven, you've been forgiven of something that's still on the books. It's still there.

And you're going to live for eternity, hopefully in the kingdom of God, knowing that you still owe i mean no i guess you don't know no it's not going to be held in front of you no it's not going to be exacted you're not going to have your your wages garnished or anything like that but But you know what? This is going to cause us to love the Father for eternity because he's forgiven us. Something that very few of us know anything about. Now, did I get off the subject?

Yes, I did. But this particular situation here is that when it comes to payment, when it comes to this wage in this particular situation, these men agreed to a particular wage particular situation. These men agreed to a particular wage and

he was not cheating anybody but he can hire anybody at any wage he wants. Again, can you see the sovereignty here? Can you see how the Lord god has the ability to to make these decisions

and stick to them and and is not subject to anybody's opinion about this at all he says come work for me and i'll pay you a penny you come work for me and I'll pay you a penny had he hired them all at the same time probably wouldn't have been a problem but he didn't he hired him at different times and so the people who said okay so we work for a penny we've worked 12 hours this guy over here worked one hour for a penny shouldn't we get 12 pennies? Is that what you agreed for? And so people take this and say,

everybody's going to be equal in heaven. No, you're not. You're going to get paid exactly what the wage is. You're going to get given exactly what you're promised. And for you to calculate and kind of figure out where you're do more you know what according to him your eye is evil and you've got you got you got wrong conceptions about you know the reward that awaits us on the other side truth be known people who think like this very seldom are capable of even developing a relationship with jesus christ because you know he's just ultimately fair ultimately fair and uh you know that's a that's a curse it's a blessing. Because, man, it's, you know, why your eye is evil?

Is it, isn't, can I do what I want to do with my own? You know, why are you telling me how to run my business? You don't have a vineyard. I'm not working in your vineyard. You're working in mine. Can you see this hierarchy, this, uh establishment of one person over another in this case you know the boss over the employee you know this kind of thing is gone today you know what these people needed they needed a union they should have gone on strike now you know no no that's not what they needed. What they needed to do was accept the deal or don't accept the deal. Now, I happen to believe that this pertains a lot to Jesus' prophecy

about bringing the Gentiles in. Because, you know, remember when the the the prodigal son when he returned home the his his brother told his father i have been with you all this time and yet you haven't even given me a kid um you know a baby goat to have a party with my friends and yet this guy comes in and you do all this you know and his father was explaining look there's a there's a portion of this that you're not thinking about your brother was dead now he's alive it's right that we should make marry it's right that we should do this but you see he didn't love his brother like he's supposed to well this very thing is going to happen and and it is happening now as a matter of fact i think i i get tickled sometimes

with some of the uh you know the the the messianic push that is on today that it seems to be so popular and people are talking about it all the time and it's it's amazing because we have the apostle paul saying that god has brought the gentiles in in order to make the jews jealous well so what's happened well we have a bunch of gentiles that are jealous of jews how can that be well because people screw up everything they touch that's why and we really have a lot of this backwards but we're supposed to be living in such a way here on this earth and because we don't mean what we say we don't say what we mean

we don't use proper definitions of words we don't care about what it sounds like or what you know we we end every sentence with you know you don't do that when you pray do you um um we don't we don't care about proper theology and proper doctrine you know we figure the people that think like that are just you know dogmatic hateful people and we don't want anything to do with them everything's love and everything's sweet and everything's good wonderful and wholesome yeah but your your christianity is not working what you know jesus asked one time he says what do you more than others gee whiz so this guy is a muslim praying to allah to guide the hands of the doctor

this guy over here is a christian praying for god to guide the hands of the doctor same doctor same disease same hospital gee whiz they both get up and walk out one saying you know, Allah Akbar, or whatever he's saying to praise Allah. This one's saying, thank you, Jesus. What do you more than others? Really? Is there any honesty in any of this stuff? Do we really mean what we say? Do we really mean what we pray i'm saying that the body of christ is such a shriveled up impotent wrinkled up old man sitting in the corner i don't know how in the world anybody could be jealous of a christian who is absolutely powerless He cannot control his own thoughts. He's a slave to his own habits and his own addictions. He treats people badly. He's constantly at odds with people around him.

He can't pray with any effectiveness. How is that supposed to make anybody jealous? So they look over at the Jew and say, oh, they're God's chosen people. Well, I want to be one of them. How about just being what you've been called to be? How about doing this thing right? How about making it work?

Well, how do we do that? First of all, get honest. Quit lying. Quit stretching the truth or whatever you want to call it. White lies. or whatever you want to call it, white lies, little praises and little thank you Jesuses stuck on stuff that would have happened anyway. You're not doing him any favors. How about doing this thing honestly?

You know, why not rise above the normal? The normal is pitiful, by the way. The normal Christian, the normal the normal is pitiful by the way the normal christian the normal church member the normal conventional church it's pitiful it's absolutely pitiful there's nothing there to be envied but instead what we do is is we look around and try to find somebody that is in better shape than we are and and it's a crying blasted shame that we can look at a nation of people of religion like the jewish religion that absolutely denies jesus christ is the messiah denies that god has a son denies that he came on this earth and redeemed mankind and died for us and be jealous of them. I don't know how you do that. But boy, oh boy, do we ever do it.

All right, here's one of Jesus' predictions of death. And this is chapter 86. Jesus predicts of death. And this is chapter 86. Jesus predicts his death. As they were on their way to Jerusalem, Jesus went on ahead by himself, his followers going behind him. They were surprised and disappointed at his leaving them.

Jesus called his disciples to him and began to tell them the things that would happen to him saying behold we go up to jerusalem and the son of and shall deliver him to the Gentiles. And they shall mock him, and shall scourge him, and shall spit on him, and shall kill him. And the third day he'll rise again. But the disciples did not understand what he was saying to them. Do you know, it's not, it's not well known. But I believe that the scriptures make it very clear that these things were revealed to Jesus as he went along.

You know, when Jesus says you know some of you won't die until you see the kingdom of God coming in the clouds of heaven. When he says that this generation shall not pass away before all things be fulfilled. We hear him talk about the end of his life being the ushering in of the kingdom of god but then all of a sudden something changes along the way and you have jesus saying uh-oh this is not working out like i i thought it should you remember when john wrote to him i don't know if

he wrote him a note or sent it by messenger but john was in prison and he sent a message to jesus saying are thou he that should come or look we for another and he's saying when are we going to get on with this john was under the impression that this should have this should have all come together by now this man should have been installed as the king of israel by now he certainly should have been installed as the high priest and established the the order of the priestly order of melchizedek by now what in the world is going on he was under the impression that things just weren't moving as fast as they should jesus had to send back to him and say you know what doing the best you can ah you know the

lame are walking and the blind can see and you know i'm doing what i what i know to do and i think john was a little bit discouraged. You know what? I think Jesus was too. I will never believe, not the longest day I live, that he left the splendor of heaven knowing his destiny. Nice song. You know, it might even bring a tear to your eye. But you'll never convince me the longest day you live that he left heaven to come here and be brutally murdered by his people

on a wooden stake outside Jerusalem. I'll never believe that. I know it happened, but I don't think that was the plan. I want to talk about this. Can we talk about this? Well, probably not today. Time is gone. But this was a horrible turn in the plan of God,

but it was pretty obvious the Jews were not accepting what he had to say, and things were going to have to change. Here's one of his first revelations of it. They're going to deliver me to the chief priests and the scribes. Not to the Romans, by the way. But they're going to deliver me to the church and the church is going to kill me.

I'm sorry to say, Jesus, but I'm afraid they're still doing that today. All right, it's time for us to go. Thank you so much for being part of the broadcast. Don't let this get you down. Tune in. We're going to talk about it again, all right? If you'd like to write to me,

write to me at don at thinkredinc.com, or you can write to Think Red Inc. Ministries, P.O. Box 718, Pytown, New Mexico, 87827. All right, until next time, 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