Words of Jesus Podcast - Gospel is Free - Not Priceless

Episode Date: November 5, 2021

CHAPTER 14:  JESUS EXPLAINS HIS ATTITUDE ON FASTINGTHE 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’.” ***Word of God, Feast of Tabernacles, Spiritual Israel, Wrestle with God; STRIVE to BECOME ISRAEL; Ministry of Jesus was under the Old Testament; three time a year shall all thy males… COMMANDMENT; Jesus Led by the Spirit (live under the law - hear the Spirit); Calendar of YHVH; Disciples didn't believe yet (actually didn't understand Jesus' purposes; Jews were excommunicated when they followed Christ); "No man can take you out of my hand..." - not eternal security; Jesus assured the people - I'm your Shephard; synagogue (church) membership isn't a requirement; Faith is shown by Works;

Think Red Ink Ministries presents the Words of Jesus series with Don C. Harris. Hello my friend and welcome once again to the Words of Jesus series. I'm Don Harris, your host, and I'm glad to be here, and I hope you are too. You're having as much fun as I am. You're having a lot of fun. Because this has been a part of my life for a good long while, and it's not worn out yet. As a matter of fact, it's one of my favorite things to do and that is to get to know my Lord that leads me and guides me from the inside up.

And you know, I guess I should, I say this perhaps often, but I think it just bears repeating and I think we need to, I think we all need to come to the realization that by golly, you have what it takes to set up, maintain a relationship,

a communicative relationship with God that He can actually be a part of your life. There is nothing in your life more important. And it doesn't matter what kind of tragedy you have going on. It doesn't matter if you won the lottery last week. There is nothing more important to you than guidance from your God. And I just, I think that when I talk that way, or when I mention these kinds of things, that there's a sense of

incapability, there's a sense of I don't know that I can do this. I need help. I need a preacher, I need a priest. I need a rabbi. I need somebody to guide me. I told you the story when Philip found the Ethiopian eunuch on his way home from, I'm assuming, some feast that he had attended there in Jerusalem. And evidently this Ethiopian had enough money to purchase a scroll and he was reading it as he was plodding along in the chariot there in his

little carriage or whatever it was. And Philip asked him a question that I think a lot of us are afraid to answer. Can I dispossess you of that fear today? Philip asked him, do you understand what you're reading? And the man answered, how can I? Except some man should guide me. Now look, I know we need men in our lives

to help us get along and to show us the way and to perhaps explain things. How did it say it about Apollos? It said that they took them aside to explain the way of God more perfectly. We all need this from our friends. We need it from our from the people that we trust, from the people in our life that have perhaps mature relationships with God.

But have perhaps mature relationships with God. But I just feel like that in the day we live in today there's kind of an expert mentality. I don't know if you've been to the doctor recently, but there's, I could be wrong, but I don't know of a general practitioner anymore. Every time you have something, I guess a GP, the only thing he does

is refer you to a specialist. And I don't know, we tend to have an idea that things can be so complicated that no one man could know it all. Of course, that's true. But I want you to get confidence in your ability to hear, to understand, and get yourself a track record of obeying what you hear the Lord tell you to do. You know, once you have that track record going,

once you've heard His voice, nothing else will suffice. Nothing else is going to work in your life other than hearing His voice. Nothing. Nothing in your life is more important. It doesn't matter if it's something wonderful or if it's some horrible tragedy. I'm telling you, nothing in your life is more important than you to hear God's voice. I'd love to talk about these kinds of things. And we do on our radio show from time to time. We take subjects like this and talk about it, especially like meditation.

Today we're going to be talking about fasting. And there are certain things, certain operations in the Christian's life that, well, frankly, they don't understand. It's not been a part of their life, and they wonder where it fits. Or they do it incorrectly or improperly or they do it with just reckless abandon. They kind of subtract common sense from the equation. There's a lot of ways to get this wrong.

But here's something you should know. There's a lot of ways of getting this right. If you think for one moment that our God is so narrow and so short-sighted that he doesn't fully understand that, there's more than one way to get this right. You're missing this thing altogether. It's not like there's a line and a road of perfection that either you're in it or you're missing this thing altogether. It's not like there's a line and a road of perfection that either you're in it or you're out of it. This comes from that sin everyday idea. This

comes from that, you know, we can't help but be, you know, we sin because we're sinners or we don't, we don't, we're not sinners because we sin. We sin because we're sinners. All these little cliche and little trite sayings that we throw back and forth. I think what they do is they eventually build up sludge in this pipe between us and our Father and it's just unnecessary. Here's something you should know. You can be absolutely right where you're supposed to be with God and still

have imperfections in your life. I always relate it to tuning a guitar. You know when you tune a guitar you don't tune all six strings at once. You tune a string at a time. And depending on the way you tune a guitar, I don't know if you're a guitar player or know anything about it, but there's a way of tuning the next string according to the one you just tuned. There's also tuning by a pitch pipe

or tuning by an electronic device that you can choose whatever string you want and put it dead on accurate. Well, I think what happens in the Christian's life is that we do have foundational strings that we have to tune. And if you insist on tuning the rest of the guitar to that string, you're going to let me wear this metaphor out, I'm sorry. But if you insist on doing that, and I think that's a common way of people setting things up in their life,

if your foundation is not correct, if that first string's not correct, you're never going to be where you need to be. I happen to believe there's truth in that. And, you know, there is a fundamental, or should be, a fundamental understanding about the God we serve. And I think it demands that we consider this. Not so much of what he looks like or what his voice sounds like

or any of the other silly notions that we can get about him. But who is this character? Who is this fellow running things? What's he all about? And you're going to probably be surprised as time goes on how many things that he really is just absolutely indifferent about that you thought was sin. And there's a lot of things in your life that you're indifferent about. And he's really excited about the fact that

you're not doing what he said. And he's really excited about the fact that you're not doing what he said. And unless we get these foundations correct, you're going to have trouble the rest of your days trying to make sense of all this. Here's something you should know about your father. There's a lot of ways of doing this right. You can be right and still be wrong because we're just tuned one string at a time until it all comes together

and all of a sudden we're making music. It's a wonderful thing to realize that you don't have to get it perfect to be absolutely right. One of my favorite revelations I received from him was, you know, you hear me teach, if you've listened to this ministry or used or, you know, read or listened to the materials of this ministry, you know that I believe and teach that in these last days that God, not Satan, not some president you don't like, not somebody

that's not of your political persuasion, not some wild preacher, not some whoever you want to pick, some satanic being but God himself is going to send to the earth a strong delusion. Why would he do that? Well he says so. That they all might believe a lie and be damned. Do you hear that coming up inside you?

Not my God, not my Jesus. Do you realize you better give a whole lot of thought to your God and your Jesus, find out where he came from? If you find that the words in scripture, the inspired words of the prophet, the inspired words of our Lord Jesus Christ, they don't fit the God that's in your brain?

Buddy, you're trying to tune this guitar string by string, and the foundation's off. It's off. Most important thing we can do is get to know the character of our God. Do you know that was the whole purpose and what Jesus Christ came to do on this earth? That was his purpose. That's what he came to do. And mostly

what I hear, God's not our enemy. We are at enmity with him. We have there is friction between us. But it's mostly our sin. It's mostly our problem. And not only does He insist that we fix this, He insists on helping us do so. Today we're starting in chapter 14 on our little book called The Words of Jesus and this is Jesus Explains His Attitude

on Fasting. The disciples of John the Baptist and the Pharisees came to Jesus troubled in their hearts asking, why do the disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast, but thy disciples fast not? Jesus replied, Can you make the children of the bride chamber fast, when the bridegroom is with them?

But the days will come when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and they will fast in those days. No man putteth a piece of a new garment. Before I get into this next idea that he's going to expound upon, let me back up here and just say that if we have ever, if there's ever a descriptive phrase to talk about the situation we are in right now, I think it's contained

in two of the teachings and or parables that Jesus taught. One of them is this right here. When the bridegroom was here the need for fasting was just not in anybody's mind. What was in our mind? It was feasting, was it not? Because the bridegroom's here. Everything's like it's supposed to be. But there's coming a time when the bridegroom is going to be taken away. Now, if

that's so, then what he says here would eventually be true that when the bridegroom is taken away they will fast in those days. Friend, those are the days we live in right now. And doubly so if you happen to be of the belief as I am that we're living in a time now that Jesus in one of his parables said, our Lord delays his coming. I really believe

personally, I believe that we are in that time of delay right now. I think that the coming of Christ has been delayed. Why would He delay it? Well, do you know who He is? Very much like what we were talking about when we opened the show. If you don't know His personality, if you don't know his attitude about the redemption of mankind, you can get that answer wrong. You can get it wrong. If you feel like he doesn't care, that

he is essentially apathetic to whatever's going on on the earth or, you know, as they said in the 60s that he's dead or that he's just essentially non-existent, essentially just doesn't care, essentially doesn't actually do anything in anybody's life. If you are of that mindset, when I say, why would the Lord delay his coming? The answer would be, because he doesn't care.

But if you believe that he loves us and you believe that He does have our best interest at heart and He is working on a plan of redemption if all these things are true then when I say why would the Lord be delaying His coming you're going to have to answer because He loves us. Do you know the Bible will agree with you if you say that? He said it's the long suffering of God that He waited in the days of Noah.

It's the long suffering of God that He waits in the day that we live in today. He just has incredible hope about our future that frankly I don't share. I just see it getting worse and worse and worse. I don't know how we could pull out before the end of my lifetime. You find yourself saying as you've heard written in the New Testament,

and many preachers say, you know, even so, come Lord Jesus. And again, they don't understand who they're speaking to. The prophet said, a man who desires the day of the Lord lacks understanding. I really think that our whole idea of His coming is skewed by our goofy religion. And that we have ideas that have no basis, no scriptural basis, no backing, not even in the realms of logic and solid thinking, clear thinking. It's almost like we don't care. It's almost like it's a

fairy tale. What damage can you do to a fairy tale? This is so sad because that's not the purpose. That's not the plan. That's not the way this is supposed to work. So if we do have his attitude about this and we do understand the prophet when he says a man who desires the day of the Lord lacks understanding, perhaps there's some things you don't know about the day of the Lord and we're going to talk about them. Because you know Jesus

made a comment, here's something for you to think about for the next few months. Jesus made a comment one time. He says that when the Son of Man comes through the clouds, all the tribes of the earth will mourn. Who is that? Who is it that's mourning his coming? You think you're going to have a party? You think you're going to be dancing around and just hollering and flicking your bick and waving and singing songs when he comes back?

It's something to think about. And if you look at your life realistically, you may find that perhaps there are some things that we need to be concerned about. Which is always the case. Well, it is. You're talking about a God that wants more for us than we want for ourselves. You know, we're just fine. Give me something to eat. Give me a nice TV show to watch and a warm bed to sleep in. And, you know, that's about all I need. Well, what are you doing about your own self-fulfillment? Are you going to die the

person that Lord wanted you to be when He created you? Are you going to, I mean there's people that have intention on dying you know they were born a woman they intend on dying a man. I don't know I don't understand that but there't understand that, but there's people that, you know, they think that makes sense. And there are people who believe that comfort and having everything you want is the will of God for their lives. I'm going to

tell you what the will of God is for our lives, and that is to be a witness for our God because frankly, you talk about Him delaying His coming. What if He's delaying His coming waiting for your neighbor who lives over the fence from your house to see an example of a true Christian? Are you holding everything up? All right. to see an example of a true Christian. Are you holding everything up?

Alright. So Jesus is talking about fasting and saying that when the bridegroom is with the bridal party that there's no fasting going on but there's coming a time when it will. We're going to, as we continue talking about this, talk about what exactly fasting is and why a person would or should do it. There's a lot of concepts in the psyche

or the mind of most Christians. It's just wrong about this. And you can actually do yourself damage. There's also people who feel like this is an ancient idea. It's really not for us today. There are people who feel like if you can't fast for 40 days you're just not spiritual enough. There's all kinds of ideas about fasting. We've had the church in our lives for many, many

years and many of us still wonder about death. And we wonder about being so helpless and living through bad times and not knowing what to do and trying to make decisions in life. It seems like nobody even tells us how. Frankly, I think it's because a lot of them don't know. Now, he talks about they will fast in those days and I guess the main point I want to get across to you is those are

the days that we're living in right now. Those days are difficult because we need guidance. We need to hear from the Lord. Do you remember when Jesus sent the 70 out? They came back and said, you know, this was an amazing trip. We found that even the demons were subject to us in your name. They're saying this to Jesus, and Jesus says, you know,

that's nice and everything, but you know, if you're going to rejoice in anything, you need to rejoice that your name is written down. That's what you need to rejoice in. It wasn't very long after that that a man showed up with his little boy, was it a boy? And said to the Lord, said, you know, I brought him to your disciples and they could not cast this demon out or they could not

heal her. I forget all the details of the particulars. And Jesus said it was a very condemning statement. And that was that he says, oh, you faithless and perverse generation. How long will I suffer you? How long will I be with you? He was hugely disappointed that there was a soul in the path of these 70 men who came back. There's a soul in that path that did not receive

from God and he, I don't know that he was reiterating something that he had taught them previously or that he was giving them new information. It's not really clear. But he says how be it this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting. So the average

Christian is trying to do the right thing he's trying to he's trying trying trying trying he's got problems in his life he needs God's help and all that being just as undeniable as it can be he feels like okay I've got an answer here. Perhaps prayer in this situation is just simply not enough. What I'm going to have to do is I'm going to have to add fasting to the prayer.

Because Jesus said it's by prayer and fasting. So what does he do? Well, he pretty much does what he's always heard everybody else does about fasting. And there's a lot of information out there about it. But I got a feeling just from my own experience that this poor guy's going to be really disappointed.

Because in my experience, I have never seen fasting actually break through in a situation of prayer, like break down whatever wall is in the way of us receiving what we need. The prayer would have been and could have been enough, but it was prayed in an attitude of self-consumption. What did he say? He says

you have not because you ask not and you ask and receive not because you ask amiss that it might be consumed upon your lust. We hear the word consume and we think, what's he talking about, food? He says lust. What is he talking about, food? He says lust. He said, well, what is he talking about, sex? And so we have a lot of really weird ideas about this particular idea

of asking amiss. But friend, you know, if you ask correctly, if you ask according to the will of God, if you will insist that you're only going to ask what the Lord has instructed you to ask, and you're only dealing in the area that perhaps narrow, perhaps wide, the Lord will give you these kinds of instructions. When you're praying in that way, you're going to find that prayer is just enough. When you're talking about demon possession, well're going to find that prayer is just enough. When you're talking about demon possession,

you're talking about something different there. And frankly, we'll talk about it next time. Time's gone now. But frankly, I think you need to know that that's something that we're just not going to have to deal with. All right, it's time for us to go. Thank you so much for being part of the Words of Jesus series. Hey, I want to hear from you.

If you'd like to write to me, I would love to get an email from you. You just simply write to Don at thinkredink.com. I'll get your email. And if there's any materials that you find at thinkredink.com that you think you would like, let me know what it is. Give me your address. I'll be glad to send it to you. My address is Think Creating Ministries, PO Box 718, Pytown, New Mexico, 87827. Time for us to go. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye. Amen. ThinkRedInc.com. That's ThinkRedInc.com.

Join us again for the next episode in the Words of Jesus series. you