Words of Jesus Podcast - Garden of Eden - The Power to Become Sons of God

Episode Date: March 19, 2021

Many question the wisdom of God and surmise God's error in making the forbidden 'Tree of Knowledge' and the 'Tree of Life' within the reach of Adam and Eve. The false doctrine of 'God knows everything' creates resentment. The Voice of God in the garden "looking for Adam" shows He did not know what happened. Adam says, "we were naked". God says, "Who told you that?" Read the account in Genesis.***The Temptation of Jesus (Part 3)IMMEDIATELY after he had been baptized the Spirit of God led Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted of Satan. After fasting for forty days and nights he was hungry.           Satan came to him, saying:           “If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.”           Jesus replied:           “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.’”           Then Satan took him into the holy city and thence to a pinnacle of the temple and said:           “If thou aret the Son of God, sast thyself down; for it is written, ‘He shall give his angels charge concerning thee; and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.’”           Jesus replied:           “It is written again, ‘Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.’” Then Satan took Jesus to the top of a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, saying:           “All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.”           Jesus repulsed Satan with these words:           “Get thee hense, Satan; for it is written, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.’”           The temptation overcome, angels came and ministered unto him.***CHAPTER 3 SCRIPTURES (KJV):MATTHEW 4:1-11Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple,And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.Again,

Think Red Ink Ministries presents The Words of Jesus series with Don C. Harris Hello friend, thanks for joining us again. Hello, friend. Thanks for joining us again. Really happy, those of us at Think Red Ink Ministries, to present to you this Words of Jesus series. Can't think of anything more important than to know, to be familiar with what Jesus actually said.

You're going to have to be strong. You're going to have to have faith in God. And, frankly, you're going to have to be strong. You're going to have to have faith in God. And frankly, you're going to have to have faith in yourself and your relationship to God in order for these things to work. I noticed that among Christians, there is an inadequacy that is felt among Christians that they can't understand the Bible, they can't understand the things of God, that they need someone to help them. Do you realize that the scriptures actually say that you have no need that any man teach you? The Bible teaches clearly that the Spirit that actually

brought us forth, the Spirit that actually brought us forth, the Spirit that has entered our lives and given us the power to become the sons of God, it also has the power to teach us what we need to know as Christians as our lives progress. The story in the book of Genesis about the creation of man shows that there are two trees in this garden, the tree of knowledge and the tree of life, both of which were restricted from Adam and Eve both. And many people have wrung their hands over, why did he do that? Was he tempting

us? Why would he put these trees there and then tempt us by saying don't touch them? You have to understand that the idea of disobeying God was not originated within us. When he created us we had no intention on disobeying God. That idea had to be put into the mind of Eve and then subsequently into the mind of Adam. And as that idea came to them

and they decided to disobey God, they fell from that place that they were, which was we were in love with him. He was in love with us. Everything was fine. Everything was just like it ought to be until this thought, this idea was spoken to us. And now we have no trouble at all coming up with all kinds of ways of disappointing him and disobeying His laws and it's just

vestigial. It's leftover from the fall. And it's just a part of our DNA now. And it's so discouraging sometimes. But we do know that to as many as received Him when Christ came, to as many as received Him, when Christ came to as many as received Him, to them gave He the power to become the Son of God. Now if you have the power to become the Son of God or the daughter of God, to join this

particular family of God, you're experiencing something that another miscalculation on the part of misinterpretation, misdefinition. I say in some cases a dis-definition of the word grace. Grace is the power of God used on our behalf to make us into the people that we need to be. It's not unmerited favor, it's merited favor. It's given to those who actually put their faith in God.

Something that we do with ourselves. Last time we were talking about the actions that are involved in the Christian walk and things that I don't want to use the word required to do, but things that you will do if you want this to work. There's not really a requirement as much as there is that we actually move on our good

common sense and do what we know that we should do. And that we not do what we know displeases Him. The idea of us being a part of our salvation, it's also found in the book of Revelation, John asked the angel, who are these people? A group of people that he indicates and the angel answers him these are the called, the chosen and the faithful. I want you to look at those

three words because they're very important and very pertinent to what we're talking about and have been talking about through the last several shows. And that is our responsibility to bring about action in our lives. Now when he says the called there are certain people who are called to be of God. Called to be in the family of God. I am assuming that on your part.

I don't know how difficult that is for you to conceive of, but the truth is that if you have that within you, that now you feel that you want to be a part of the kingdom of God, you have on your life what I would call a calling of God. This is God calling you. Now, something you should know about the call of God, and that is that you have absolutely nothing to do with this. This is something that He decides. He

told Moses, you know, I accept who I accept and I reject who I reject. He has decided that should you be one of those that are called, you are very, very fortunate. I know the common understanding of God's calling is that he's called the whole world. And He came to save the whole world. But that's not what Jesus said.

Let's think red inked for just a moment. What did He actually say? Many are called. Listen, if all were called, our Lord Jesus would not have had any trouble saying, you know, everybody's called, but only if you're chosen. He wouldn't have any trouble saying all are called, but he didn't. He said many. And so even though it's many, you can interpret that as 51% or 98%.

The percentage hardly means anything. I'll tell you what means something is that you have within you a calling of God on your life to be the man or woman that He wants you to be. But what you should know is that has nothing to do with you. There is nothing you can do in order to bring about that call. Nothing I know of or certainly nothing that the Scripture speaks of. It is that He knows us and He's known us from our mother's womb. And he, I guess he can look into our DNA coil, our DNA strand and see something there that is desirable to him. And he

calls us, but it has nothing to do with anything you can do to be saved. There is nothing you can do to be called. The angel gave him three. He said, these are the called, the chosen, and the faithful. Let's skip over chosen just a minute and look at faithful. Do you realize that there is nothing he can do to make you faithful? Nothing. Nothing he can do to make you faithful? Nothing. Nothing he can do. He has parted seas and had people walk over eight miles on dry ground when there used to be the Gulf of Aqaba there in front of them

that they would have drowned otherwise. But it was not long after that that these very same people were worshiping other gods. When it comes to being faithful to our calling, faithful to our choosing, it has nothing to do with him and everything to do with you. Chosen, however, is when we do answer His call and many churches never tell you how to answer that call or what they do tell you is absolutely erroneous, absolutely out of the mind of men, not from the Scriptures at all.

If you want to talk about that, we will. But when the Bible says these are the called, the chosen and the faithful, this choosing happens when we decide to quit going our way and start going His. The covenant that He makes with us, the promise that He makes to us, is iterated and laid out clearly by Ezekiel. He says that if you will stop breaking his commandments and start keeping his commandments, he says

if you'll just make that turnabout. And what did we learn that the turnabout was? We learned that that was repentance. Repentance is not feeling sorry about your condition. Repentance is doing something about it. Doing, doing, doing something about it. Well Don, that sounds like a works-oriented salvation. It is works-oriented, but it's not works-exclusive. See, works without faith is dead. You're saying,

you misquoted that. I wish the Bible said that, but it doesn't. It just teaches that throughout. It says that faith without works is dead. Can we understand that works without faith is dead as well? So it's not exclusively works. No, it's certainly not. We have to do this through faith in our Messiah, through faith in God, but He chooses us because of our decision to go His way. Here we see

this second group of people that is mentioned in Revelation called the chosen and the faithful. This chosen is a collaboration. It's He and us working together to work out our own salvation. When we're in that particular situation, we are in the process of being chosen. And once we have established that relationship with God,

then it's up to us to be faithful. So we see that we have the called, has nothing to do with you. Chosen is a collaboration between what God and you do. And then the faithful, which has nothing to do with him, had everything to do with you. I think that our foundations in the areas of salvation are so flawed we can't even make sense of this in our quiet hours. In the middle of the night when we open our peepers and are looking at the ceiling fan turning

in the ceiling, we think about these things and they don't make sense, but there's nothing seemingly that we can do about it because we have these, what we feel are just ironclad doctrines that cannot be stepped over. We talked about the idea that all of us are sinners. All of us have been, absolutely, but we have to sin every day. I'm sorry friend, I don't believe that. That we have no power over sin. I'm sorry friend, I don't believe that. We're subject to Satan and all of his devices. I'm sorry friend, I don't

believe that. I happen to believe that when you are a child of God, the wicked one touches you not. The only person that you have a concern about, which you should be concerned about, is the one wearing your shirt right now. He's the one that's going to take you off. He's the one that's going to pull you off the side of the road that's going to lead you astray. And it's going to be through what? What are we learning here as we go? We're only on chapter 3 of our book here. But we've

learned a lot. And one of the things is that if he's going to if this horrible sensual being known as yourself is going to pull you off he's going to do this how? He's going to do this. How? He's going to do this through the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life. You know, when you think about it, a sinless life is the least God could expect of us. A sanctified life, the least that he could expect of us. We don't have to sin. We don't have to sin. Stop doing it. Just stop doing it. If he says to do it, then do it. If he says not to do it, then don't do it. It's really that simple. And this is the way we are faithful. This is the way

that we co-labor with God. That the promise that Ezekiel said was, is when you quit going your way and start going my way, well, how does it end? He says, I will not remember anything you've ever done wrong. Is there anybody who doesn't want that deal? I would love to have that deal. The only place I can find that deal in the scriptures starts with me keeping God's commandments. They're very important

and easy to keep. Why don't we do that? I really don't understand. Preachers spend a lot of time loud and long, boy, they just go on and on about how the law has passed away. And they act like they appreciate that. I'd like to know, preacher, what's wrong with not committing adultery? Is there something wrong with that? Is there something wrong with not murdering?

Something wrong with not being a thief? Something wrong with honoring God's name, not having any gods before him, not creating idols to worship? Is there something wrong with honoring God's name, not having any gods before Him, not creating idols to worship? Is there something wrong with these things? We all should examine why we say what we say and why we do what we do. There will come a time when you'll stand judgment before God and He will not ask you what you believe. He will not ask you what you have faith in. He's going to know exactly

what you believe. He's going to know exactly who you have faith in by looking at your works. It is an essential part. I felt it necessary to continue that stream of thought from the last show because I think that this is a very sore subject with a lot of people. They do not appreciate this idea at all. They want to stick to it's by faith alone.

And they need to understand where the word alone came from. Martin Luther wrote that into the margins of his Bible. But you have to understand what Martin Luther was combating in his day. The so-called church, and essentially the only one on the earth, was a church that insisted that we do certain things, that we pray certain things, that we say certain things at certain times and all these kinds of things. And the lack of this in our life would cost us our eternal life.

There are Protestant denominations as well that teach that if you're not baptized in water and the preacher didn't say Jesus when you went under the water, doesn't count. There are people who believe if you don't take the Eucharist that you're not saved. These are the kind of things Martin Luther was battling and we need not be so critical of him when he says that we're saved by faith alone. However that statement is not

a solid scriptural foundation. That our works are a part of our faith. You show me your faith without your works. Go ahead. Come on. Show me your faith without your works. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll show you my faith by my works. Now that's what our scripture teaches us. That's what our Lord Jesus taught us. And on the Mount of Temptation when Jesus was

there being tempted, I don't think it would have sufficed for him to tell the devil that I believe in God. And if he's over there gathering up a bunch of rocks to make himself a nice bread pudding or whatever it is he's going to do, when he turns these loaves into bread, it wouldn't have done a bit of good for him to say that he believes in God. What he did say

was that, and we're going to read it here in just a moment. Boy, our time's going by. Sorry about that, but these things are so rich, they're just hard to talk about without having to relay certain foundations and to erase certain doctrines and certain ideas in our heads that are just really frankly getting in the way of us understanding what is going on here. It wouldn't have done Jesus any good to have explained what He believed or where His allegiances lie, especially

if He was doing the opposite of what the Lord had made it clear that he should do. We should understand also that our idea of worship of God has been tainted over recent years as a matter of fact. The word praise and worship is used in literature and in signs and in speech and in sermons and they're used

as if they are synonymous. And so when it comes to worship of God there are many people who don't understand that we worship God by doing what He says to do. That is how we show Him our allegiance. It is true worship and anything short of it is frankly, my friend, it is not worship at all. Now the idea of praise and worship being connected, many people have connected them

in their heads to the point that it is indeed true, at least in their mind, that the way you worship God is to praise Him by singing songs and by saying certain things and by positioning your hands in a certain way or by standing to your feet or whatever it is that you do in order to we feel like we're praising God and that is therefore worship. But you have to understand that worship is doing

what your God says to do. The greatest worship that is ever offered to the Lord is our obedience to His commandments, our obedience to His Word. And remember that Jesus said that He was that Word. He is the Word made flesh. His words are spirit and they are life. If you ever find yourself in violation of what Jesus clearly said for us to do or clearly said for us not to do

you find yourself in violation. Friend, you cannot at that point say that you can or do worship God because worship is to obey the God that is speaking to you. I say all that for you to understand that I ask you, how did the God of this world become the God of this world? We're going to read here

that He, as I said in the last show, that Satan carried him up on a high pinnacle and showed him all the cities. And he says, if you'll bow down and worship me, I'll give you all these cities. And here we see the lust of the eye. And Jesus had he done what he was told, had he obeyed the voice of Satan, he would at that

point be worshiping him. How did the God of this world become the God of this world? This entire world was placed into the hands of Adam. He was to rule and reign, have dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, and everything that creeps on the face of the earth. It was all under his domain, under his power and control. And when he turned to the serpent symbolizing Satan himself and worshipped him he made Satan his god and therefore Satan became the god of this world.

How did Adam make him the god of this world? By worshipping him. How did of this world? By worshiping Him. How did He worship Him? By raising His hands and swaying and singing songs to Him? No. He made Him the God of this world by doing what He said to do. He did it by obeying Him. How do we make our God the God of this world?

How do we make our God our God? By doing what He says to do. By obeying Him. It is the only way that we can do this. We can't say one thing and do another. We just cannot do it. It's hypocrisy. It's wrong. It's ineffectual. And worst of all, it deceives you.

You think because you go certain places at certain times and you dress the way you do and you talk the way you do and you only frequent certain people and places and groups and this kind of thing. You're involved in church, you're involved in Sunday school, and you're involved in all this stuff that you think that you have a relationship with God. It's amazing to me how people reject the idea that it's not about works, yet their life shows that they are very concerned about works. Yet their life, their life shows that they are very concerned about works. The very same people

that say, you know, you don't have to do this to be saved will tell you that you have to be baptized to be saved. But we're not under the law. You know what you're saying? We're not under God's law. We're under your law. You have to go to church every Sunday. I know they don't say those kind of things, but they certainly do imply them. And what we need to realize is that those that are more than willing to dispense

with God's law, his ten commandments, they're not willing to dispense with theirs at all. So are these people preaching a work salvation? Well I'm afraid they are. I'm afraid they are. Look preacher, I'm not going to go to church. I'm not going to pay my tithes. I'm not going to get baptized. I'm not going to involve myself in the church. But I'm going to believe in God. Is that enough? Is that enough? Is that enough?

Boy, wouldn't a preacher feel his hackles kind of stand up at that particular point? Wouldn't he feel obligated to tell him, now let me tell you something. You don't have to go to church to be a Christian, but I certainly don't know how you're going to make it from day to day without fellowshipping with God's people. You know, we're going to talk about these things. You know, we've got a lot to go through here.

But the Lord Jesus, he actually talks about a lot of this stuff that we're not necessarily willing to talk about or we need somebody to interpret it for us. Which brings me back to my original point. And that is that I think that one of the most detrimental thoughts that have ever come across a Christian's mind

is his feeling of inadequacy to receive from God revelation and teaching from Him. That we need somebody to explain it to us. Look, you know, Philip, the Ethiopian eunuch, you know that story. When Philip sees this man reading in the scriptures and he said, do you understand what you're reading? And the guy says, well, how can I? Except some man should guide me.

You know, there's a lot of people that feel that way. Let me tell you something about the Ethiopian eunuch. He was as lost as a ball in high grass. He'd never experienced regeneration. He'd never experienced any of these things. Well, of course he needed some man to explain it to him. But when he decided to go God's way, Philip baptized him. What did Philip do?

Now, if you need to order some of my DVDs or read some of my books, what did he do? Philip left and left him there. He was leaving that Ethiopian eunuch with the author of the scriptures living inside him. Friend, you are not inadequate. You are not incapable of hearing the voice of God and having him lead you through your lives. Time's gone. Sorry about that. We want you to join us next time for more words of Jesus. We want to hear from you. Just write to me, Don, at thinkredink.com. Or you can write to Think Red Ink Ministries at P.O. Box 718, Hightown, New Mexico, 87827.

All right, we'll see you next time. Bye-bye. ThinkRedInc.com. That's ThinkRedInc.com. Join us again for the next episode in the Words of Jesus series. you