Words of Jesus Podcast - God Is Upset When We Are Not Good To Each Other

Episode Date: June 14, 2024

"Go and learn." The expectation of Christianity is that we imitate our LORD Jesus. We cannot make a gift (or be a profitable servant) when we have not done that which is required. How to HEAR from God: 1) Keep the Commandments;   2) Obey your conscience; 3) Take time daily to LISTEN; If you have twenty minutes with the God of the Universe, who should be still?***76: Jesus Teaches His Disciples Repentance, Faith, and ServiceLuke 17:1-10When Jesus had completed the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, he turned to his disciples and said:         “It is impossible but that offenses will come. But woe unto him through whom they come! It were better for him that  a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.Take heed to yourselves. If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, ‘I repent;’ thou shalt forgive him.”         The apostles said to Jesus:            “Increase our faith.”            Jesus replied:            “If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto this sycamine tree, ‘Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea;’ and it should obey you. But which of you, having a servant plowing or feeding cattle, will say unto him by and by, when he is come from the field, ‘Go and sit down to meat?’ And will not rather say unto him, ‘Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken; and afterward thou shalt eat and drink?’ Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I trow [think] not. So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done that which was our duty to do.’”

Think Red Ink Ministries presents The Words of Jesus series. I'm Don Harris, your host. And we've been wading our way through red ink. It's getting thicker and thicker. I hope by now you've already experienced what I want you to experience and eventually live in, and that is to have the mind of Christ, or as we say here, think red ink. We've been talking from the 76th chapter where Jesus was teaching on repentance, faith, and service, and he starts out by saying that one thing is is extremely needful and

important in your in your faith walk and that is to have good relation between you and others here on the earth and I don't know that this is really preached enough we talk a lot about our relationship to God and we need to go to church because it's a sin against God. We need to be baptized because it's a sin if you don't. And you need to do this and you need to do that and all this church service and things like this. And although I guess these things are good and they certainly, I mean, you could certainly find some benefit in this. The fact of of the matter is is when I see God sitting up on the edge of his throne and he's a little bit red-faced and his in

his arms raised and his index finger is out and he's upset about something you know what he's upset about you know he takes a lot of guff. I mean, he takes, he seems to be pretty tolerable in the areas where we sin against him, where we have other gods in our life, or where we, you know, the silly things that we do in violation of the commandments that affect him. But one thing that really gets his ire up is when we start treating one another badly. And I would say that of all the things that he is concerned about, that's got to be number one, the way we treat each other. Now, if you had to point at a failure of the society in which we live today, wouldn't it be unequivocal that we treat each other really badly? I mean, everything from, you know, fistfights in the

schoolyard until we're, you know, 60 years old and got a job in Congress, where we treat people badly and unfairly and unjustly. I mean, it just seems to be epidemic. You know, let alone the mad dogs with guns that just kill people indiscriminately in the world we live in. We treat one another badly. We can't even stay married. I mean, we can't keep our families intact. Family! We can't even treat our family well.

And it's one of his real pet peeves. Well, here Jesus is saying that your relationship to others around you is extremely important. In another place, you know where Jesus says that if you bring a gift to the altar. Now gifts, that's a wonderful thing, isn't it? To bring a gift to God. A gift to the altar. A gift for the Levites. A gift for the temple. You know, this is something that I want to do because I love you.

Well, you know, God could get all twitterpated about that and say, you know, isn't that wonderful? But do you know what's on his mind? When you bring a gift to him, how you doing with your neighbor? How's things there? I'm thinking, wait a minute, I'm bringing you a gift? And he says, you make things right with your neighbor. Then you can offer your gift.

Hmm, okay, I'll be back. Leave the gift. Now go make things right with your neighbor. Because I know what you'll do. You'll never be back okay I added that part but isn't it a little accurate sure it is so he says I don't even want you gifts unless things are right with your neighbor your Sabbath your gifts your offerings your sacrifices they make me sick at my stomach.

Jesus says, I'll tell you what, all you people that follow all the letters of the law, and you make sure you cut the lamb's throat from left to right, or whatever else is important to you, and your little rule books and all that stuff, let me tell you something. What you need to do, he says in Hebrew, tzitzumad. What is he saying? Go and learn. Go and learn. He's telling Pharisees to go and learn. You see, what was really sassy about this whole thing was that's what the Pharisees would say to new students

in the yeshiva all the time. And when they would come to, you know, I don't understand this and I don't understand that, they would say, Tzitzumad, go and learn. You know, you need to widen your horizons. You need to widen your knowledge. You need to be educated. Once you know what I know, all this stuff makes sense.

And they would set themselves up in some, oh, gee, don't we do that today? Mm-hmm. Yeah, we do. We do. We have hierarchies in the church, pastors and preachers and deacons and elders and... And, boy, I had a preacher tell me one time it just it just burned into my brain

i'm repeating it to you now 40 years later and he says you know when you've been in this as long as i have you won't ask so many questions well friend if I knew where you were right now, and if you were still alive, I would look at you and say you were wrong about that. I still have questions today because, you see, I didn't shut my brain off when I came to be a Baptist. You know, I pick on Baptists a lot, but I thank God for them because at least they were preaching the gospel. And I knelt at a Baptist altar. And I felt conviction at a Baptist altar. I understood the atonement

of God for my sins at a Baptist altar. I love the fact that somebody, somebody, somewhere is saying, hey sinner, you don't have to be a sinner anymore. So Jesus is saying, hey, sinner, you don't have to be a sinner anymore. So Jesus is saying that in that particular situation, in the parable or the story that I was telling you about the man who brings the gift to the altar, he says, first go and make it right with your brother, then come and offer your gift.

You're going to find this throughout the scriptures, especially after we've mentioned it and talked about it today. As you read through the Old Testament, and you read the laws, and you read the prophets, and you read through the New Testament, you're going to say, you know, our relationship in society does seem to be a really large part of Christianity. Unfortunately, today, it's become one of the least parts. It's like, it's just hardly important. We need to have good theology and good doctrine, and I agree with that. Had we had good doctrine and theology, perhaps we would know that one of God's main concerns is how we treat one another. What does the Lord demand of thee that you do justly and love

mercy? Walk humbly with your God. Two out of three? That's your fellow man. Isn't that right? That you do justly? This means that you act judiciously. This means that you execute judgments and that your nation is run according to a sound and pure and true judicial system, that you be judicious in your own thoughts, and that you love mercy. You love mercy. That's what Jesus told that Pharisearisee he says you know i know you're you know you're doing everything according to the letter but here's something you need to go and

learn i'll have mercy and not sacrifice listen to that what did he just say he just said you want to continually bring me things i'll tell you, why don't you bring your fellow man something? God doesn't need our mercy. It's not like, okay, I'll either take a sacrifice or I'll take your mercy. No. He's saying, you want to know something that is, how did the little, there was a Pharisee that asked Jesus, you know, what the greatest

commandment in the law was and he told him and um or actually he asked him he says what do you say it is and he says well it's that we love our neighbor as ourself well he said love the lord thy god with all thy heart soul mind and strength in your neighbor as yourself and uh and you know what jesus told him he says you know this thing about the about loving your neighbor you know expand on that a little bit and he says well it's more important than all the sacrifices in the world jesus said listen to this you're not far from the kingdom of god how is he not far from the kingdom of god by denying god gifts or sacrifices no don't take that from what he's saying but the way we treat

one another on this earth that is the kingdom of god that's what would usher in the kingdom of god and friend you ought to get practice because that's the way we're going to live for a thousand years. We're going to be more concerned about our neighbor than we are ourselves. All right, let's move on from here. You could talk about this forever. And Jesus talks about it again, and we'll be glad to get into it again. The apostle said to Jesus, increase our faith. Now that he has laid down the foundation of the Christian walk,

which constitutes and necessitates our forgiveness for our fellow man, the apostles say to Jesus, increase our faith. Jesus, he didn't even acknowledge that that was a question worth answering. Let me explain what I mean by that. Jesus didn't say, oh, you want your faith increased? Okay, here's how you do it. Now, I know a lot of faith teachers and, you know, word of faith people, they take this scripture and others and teach us how to grow our faith.

The idea of faith being grown in us, it's just near insanity. Friend, you either have faith or you don't have faith. Now you can be new in the faith. You can have what Jesus called fledgling faith. And that is when he said, ye of little faith. You haven't been in this very long, I understand. But you need to rely on your faith.

You have faith. You either have it or you don't. It's not a matter of growing it. It's not a matter of someone who has great faith. This is somebody who is putting great emphasis on their faith. When a man comes to Jesus and says, I need you to heal my servant. No, you don't have to go to my house. I understand how authority works. You just speak it right here. I got no complaints with that. You just go ahead and do that. Jesus says, I have never seen so great faith. No, not in Israel. Did he have a whole bunch of faith? Did he have a great big faith? No,

he had great big dependence upon his faith. It was his dependence on it. It was his reliance on that faith that was so great. It's a misnomer. It's a really bad idea. What about the fellow that came to him in that time and says, Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief. He's saying, I need to transfer my reliance from all these doubts in my mind. I need to transfer that reliance to my faith.

Some of it's still there. Can you help my unbelief? I want you to get a hold of this because if your intention is to grow your faith, like some faith teachers will teach you, you need to believe God for a dollar, and then you can believe him for a 10 spot. And then you can get yourself a hundredfold return. And then you can get yourself a thousand and 5,000 and 20,000,

and you're just going to grow your faith. Hogwash. Nothing to it. Well, you think that's me preaching? That's Jesus preaching. Listen to this. He says, Lord, increase our faith. Here's the way Jesus answered them. If you had faith, it wouldn't matter if it was the size of a grain of mustard seed.

You could say to the sycamine tree, be plucked up by the root and cast into the sea, and it should obey you. So you want what size faith? How big faith you want? If you had faith, then you've got faith. You don't grow it. You don't make it bigger. There's people who take this particular verse, and they will teach you Jesus saying,

if you had faith as a grain of mustard seed. And they go over and they find the other place where Jesus said the kingdom of God's like a mustard seed. It's planted in the earth and it grows into a great tree until a tree so big that the birds of the air can lodge in the branches thereof. Well, do you really want to do that? Do you really want to take, you know, okay, here he mentions a mustard seed. Oh, oh, oh, over here he mentions a mustard seed too. Let's take these two things and stick them together and see if we can make them say what we want them to say. It has nothing

to do with each other. Nothing to do with each other at all. He's saying if you had faith as a grain of mustard seed. He wasn't talking about the potential of the mustard seed and the fact that it's a small seed but it grows into a great tree. No, no, no, no, no, no. That was applying to the kingdom of God. Not to faith. that was applying to the kingdom of god not the faith they said increase our faith there's the subject of this conversation he's saying we want larger faith jesus said the size of your faith i don't know what you're thinking what have, have you been off watching TV? What's the matter with you? I didn't teach you that.

What are you talking about? Well, we want larger faith. If you had faith that was so small you couldn't see it if it was on this table, you could use that to have a sycamine tree plucked up by the root and cast into the sea. Hey, listen, if you want information on true faith, there is

a, what do you call it? It's a Kindle book. It's an electronic book. I don't know that it was ever published by Think Reading Ministries on paper, but you can get it through Kindle called Word First. And it's all about how to live by true biblical faith. And it talks about these very things that we're talking about right now. Word First is the name of the book. And it's a Kindle book.

And if you don't have a Kindle reader, there's apps for your phone that'll allow you to read Kindle books. There's apps for PCs. There's all kinds of ways to do this. And I don't know them all, but there are ways to do that. The name of the book again, Word First. He tells them that it'll be plucked up by the root and planted in the sea, and it should obey you. But which of you having a servant plowing or feeding cattle will say unto him by and by when he's come from the field,

go and sit down to meet. Go get something to eat. Well, I know some, you know, really nice women in my life that would do that very thing. You know, aren't you hungry? Aren't you thirsty? I always envy that attitude about others. I've just been busy in my life. You know, I have crammed, I don't know, 180 years inside my 60-some-odd. And so I've just really been busy.

And I'm not really proud of the fact that I haven't been as responsive to people's needs around me as I should have been. But some people do think that way. Jesus is saying, nobody does this. And if you want to put this into the category of employer, employee, I think we can understand it a little better. But when a servant comes in from the field, you don't say, now you sit down and get yourself something to eat.

No, doesn't he rather say um you you go gird yourself and serve me till i have eaten and drunken and afterwards thou shalt eat and drink does he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him hey, parents, are you listening? It's not a good idea to, people are going to go nuts when I say this, it's not a good idea to reward children for doing what it is their responsibility to do. There's an old saying, nobody says it anymore, certainly don't live by it,

but it says a job well done is its own reward. I thank God my mother crammed that into my head that, you know, don't expect thanks for doing what it is your responsibility to do. You're going to have to find satisfaction in that job well done well executed done on time done because it's your responsibility well i have to say as a child well you know when you're thinking about toys and thinking about all the silly things in life it's very difficult to do but you know what after a period of time i get it. And it's been a motivating factor for me for the rest of my life. You see, your duty as parents is not to necessarily control your child. Although that's very, very important. Your duty as parents is to teach the child self-control.

Your duty as a parent is not to necessarily reward your child. Your duty as a parent is to teach that child to find reward within itself, within the job that is asked to be done. So Jesus kind of threw a little bone to us right here. If we take it, I think we can change some things that are serious problems. When kids leave home, this is why they give up on their faith when they go to college.

This is why they give up on their responsibilities and these kind of things, because there's nobody over them now telling them what to do. Well, that's because they were raised to do as I say. No, do what's right. Do what's right every time. Do it well.

Doesn't matter if I'm here or not. The cat's away, the mice don't play. All right, and so he says, Does he thank that servant for doing what was commanded of him? I trow not. Old English for I think not. So likewise ye,

when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded of you, say, he's going to tell us what we should have taught our children, what we should have been taught by our parents. When you've done everything that you know that you need to do, say, I am an unprofitable servant. I have done that which is my duty to do. Let me talk about this just a moment.

We have a few minutes left. Be a nice way to finish this. This is important. Along these very lines that we're talking about right now. And that is that when we do what we are commanded to do, why would Jesus say we're unprofitable? There is no profit in paying somebody an hour's wage for an hour's work.

There is no profit in that whatsoever. Tit for tat, quid pro quo, this is what we agreed to do. You want a dollar an hour? You give me an hour's work, I give you a dollar. There's no profit in that. A profitable servant is somebody who does over and above. He's the one who goes the second mile. He's the one that does what he's not necessarily commanded to do, but he knows the heart and the mind of his master. If my master were here, this is what he would expect me to do. I've had people that work for me that had that attitude. Do you know what they were? They were extremely profitable to this ministry. They were worth so much more

than the average person who just does what they're told. Nothing wrong with doing what you're told, mind you. But if you want to be a profitable servant, you are taking on the dream, the impetus, the motivation of your employer. It's the guy who, he's, you know, there's a guy who punches out, you know, 14 minutes early because the rule says if you punch out 15 minutes early, they'll dock you for an hour. And there's the guy that punches out 14 minutes late. Don't you think your boss knows that? I've told people so many times, you want prosperity from being a Christian? Be a Christian. Have some character about yourself. Have some value for yourself. Work for your employer as unto the Lord and not unto men.

Man, your advancement and your promotion and your increase in wages, it'll all happen for you. All you got to do is do the right thing in the right way every time. That's all you have to do. There's where prosperity comes from. Not from praying over your offering or praying over your seed faith. You can do that all you want. But you become profitable to the kingdom of God, become profitable to your employer, and profitable to your home, profitable to your wife,

profitable to your husband, profitable to your children. They, in turn, learn to be profitable to you nobody's sitting around saying nobody appreciates me i did that which was my duty to do well then say i am an unprofitable servant i have done that which is my duty to do i i kind of wish the scriptures actually threw the word just in there so that people would understand what it's saying. I'm an unprofitable servant.

I just did what I was commanded to do. That makes me tit for tat. That makes me zero with who has asked me to do this. Now you do less than you've been commanded to do now you are not only an unprofitable servant but you're an expense you are you're a detriment you're in you're in the red column you see that's uh that's that's not acceptable at all but to do everything that you've been commanded to do, I'm sorry to say, you're still unprofitable.

And you can sit and cry and wring your hands and wonder why doesn't God notice me? If that's what you want to do, I do everything he tells me to do. First of all, I bet you don't. But nevertheless, even if you do, do you know where you are? You're in the unprofitable column.

Isn't that a shame? Well, it's a shame if you allow it to be. It ought to be impetus for you to go and do what you know your master wants you to do. Well, I don't know what he wants me to do. Well, then, keep the commandments of God. Don't disobey your conscience and spend time every day listening for the voice of God. You want to see prosperity. Oh my goodness. It's going to happen. Hey, I want to know how you're listening to this broadcast. I'd like to know where you live. I'd like to know how you listen. And the best way to do that is to write to me.

I'd love to get your email. Just write to Don at thinkredink.com. Questions, comments, I'll be glad to help. All right, till we see you 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