Words of Jesus Podcast - Hold Your Beliefs In An Open Hand

Episode Date: November 25, 2022

One and done attitudes have harmed personal development and perfection. We do not inherit the characteristics of Christ via osmosis or via church attendance. Nor is there any instantaneous occurrence, other than the change from pursuing our way to going God's way (repentance). Our salvation and our perfection take place over time. We are required to participate in this process through obedience. Keep the commandments; never violate your conscience and take time every day to hear the voice of God. Our walk with God is accomplished by revelation, not education. The Scriptures contain valuable insights and lessons; not to memorize, but to encourage us and provide witnesses of other relationships with God. ***Ch. 30 - Jesus Teaches the Kingdom in ParablesThe Tares (Weeds)  Matt. 13:24-30; 36-43THEN JESUS told another parable, saying:            “The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field. But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, ‘Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares?’ He said unto them, ‘An enemy hath done this.’ The servants said unto him, ‘Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?’ But he said, ‘Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”            Later on, after the multitude had been sent away and Jesus had gone into the house, his disciples came to him, saying:            “Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field.”            Jesus answered them, saying:            “He that soweth the good seed is the Son of many. The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one.  The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels.  As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be in the end of the world.  The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire. There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.  Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.”THE SEED (Mark 4:36-29)            Jesus spoke another parable, saying:             “So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how.  For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.  But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come.”A MUSTARD SEED (Matt. 13:31, 32; Mark 4:30-32; Luke 13:18, 19)            Then Jesus, speaking another parable, likened the kingdom of God to a mustard seed that grows from a...

Think Red Ink Ministries presents The Words of Jesus Series with Don C. Harris Hello my friends, welcome to the Words of Jesus series. I'm Don Harris of Think Red Ink Ministries. You should know that my goal is to reinforce Christianity. I'm going to do that with the wisdom and the words of Jesus, which, incidentally, are recorded in your Bible in red ink. Do you know what Jesus said and what he did

and what he said to do? This series is based on Jesus, his life, his friends, his ministry, and his relationship with his Father as recorded in the four Gospels. It's a very simple concept to take the words of Jesus and reinforce Christianity. It's a shame that it needs to be reinforced as much as it does, but I'm afraid that it does. We're going to delve into the

mysteries that's been hidden, not from us, but for us in the words of Jesus. We're going to start off in our little book, The Words of Jesus, in chapter 30. And this is about Jesus teaching about the kingdom of God in parables. Jesus actually appeared here on the earth with a handicap. And what was that? The language, the people, their experience, their understanding, their social orders, their political ideas, all the things that, as a matter of fact, all the things that

plague us today. We have preconceived ideas and we have a very limited vocabulary, a very limited language, so to speak. And we find these problems within ourselves. Now, Jesus was constantly trying to pull us from this lower understanding, this lower vocabulary. You know, he didn't do so much to change our vocabulary, but perhaps used our vocabulary to explain to us something that otherwise we just cannot,

could not know. Jesus, actually, we don't know. It's hard to use the word origin when you talk about Jesus. Some people think that he wasn't from the beginning. Some people think that he was created somewhat close to his appearance here on the earth. Some people, you know, they all have different theological opinions. But what we all have to admit is that the scriptures give us very little clues as to how Jesus came about. So when I say that He has been with the Father for eons

that are past our understanding, you have to understand that I'm speaking from mere speculation. We know that Jesus spoke of His time with the Father in this manner in the 17th chapter of John as he prayed what is actually the Lord's prayer. He said, Father restore unto me the glory that I had with you before the foundation of the world. So we do know that His existence

predates our world, which doesn't surprise any of us. But when He talks about the glory that He had before the foundation of the world, He's talking about something that frankly we know nothing about. We don't know what the rank and file of heaven were. I know there's a lot of, well you can call them denomination, sects, cults, whatever you want to call them

that have made speculation in that area. Some of them have even made writings that are supposed to explain these kinds of things to us. I'm afraid that in a lot of cases, as I have read them anyway, and this is strictly my opinion as I say, there's no way I can speak with any authority about the origins of Christ. That would be, well, just borderline silly. But from my understanding of what I've read

in different writings, everything from Urantia to the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl of Great Price and the Jehovah Witnesses testimony about the way things were before. A lot of them are to me anyway, at this point in my understanding and my experience with our Lord God, they are just fanciful notions

of men that are in some cases harmless. It doesn't really matter what you believe or how that particular piece of theology fits into our life here. But some of them are theologically dangerous. So I really feel like that we would behoove ourselves and everyone who knows us. And eventually, I think that in order to keep these ideas from affecting our eternal life,

and some of them can, I think we just need to be quiet about those kinds of things. They're interesting campfire musings, but in reality what we really have to deal with is what He's given us in the Scriptures so far. Now there's also the problem of the fact that we don't have all the Scriptures available to us. So there's many gaps in our understanding and theology. As a matter of fact I hear Jesus make comments from time to time about things that are in the Scriptures. I hear Paul

talk about things that I've never read. I mean for example one of the most famous sayings that are attributed to Christ is that it's better to give than to receive. Paul says, remember the words of our Lord Jesus, it's better to give than to receive. Now, was this a condensation of his entire life? Was it a condensation of the sermons that he preached? Did he just condense them down into a thought?

Or was there indeed a writing somewhere that quoted Jesus as saying that? We don't know that. We don't know. But we do know that Paul was pretty convinced that these are indeed the words of the Lord Jesus. It's better to give than to receive. Now however you feel like that information came to Paul the concept of what Paul is claiming that Jesus said is

harmless, to say the least, and very, very helpful in many of our understandings of the way Jesus wants us to run our lives. So in a lot of these cases, I think that well, in most cases, don't we just need to move away from that militant idea that it's my way or the highway, that I have this understanding, therefore you should have this understanding. This is the way my church leadership sees it, so it's necessarily correct. And your leadership doesn't see it that way,

so it's necessarily wrong. We just need to really stop a lot of this foolishness where we want to just fight and carry on. And if we do, take a more relaxed attitude about the Bible being complete and being inerrant and being infallible and there's no contradictions and all these kind of things that really cause a lot of this animosity and these feelings between us, I think that we would all be better off for it.

Another example of Jesus talking about something that we essentially know nothing about is that, you remember when the Pharisees came to Him and said to Him, now you know, because one of their concerns was about divorce and remarriage, and the Pharisees had the divorce and remarriage thing on their mind. The Sadducees had on their mind the resurrection. And a coupled question at that particular point was,

okay, so a woman marries a man and he dies. She marries according to the commandment, takes on relatives of his family and becomes his wife and then she takes on another because he dies. And so they make a scenario so that this woman has had seven husbands. And so in the resurrection I can see the Sadducees' attitude about the resurrection was that it simply didn't exist. And they were

essentially saying, this proves it. And he says, so in the resurrection, in the so-called resurrection that you talk about, whose wife will she be? Well, Jesus gives a pretty surprising answer and we're going to hit it as we go through. But for now, talking about things we just don't know. You know, there's a host of things we just don't know. And if you condense the Word of God into

this book, you know, essentially there are men on the earth that know this book a hundred times better than I do, a thousand times better than most people. And I mean, they have their opinions about these kinds of things, and they pretty much feel like they know it all. Jesus looked at these men who felt like they knew it all and said, ye do err, you're making a mistake in your theology and your thinking and your doctrine because you don't know the scriptures nor the power of God.

I understand not knowing the power of God, but if we're in the scriptures, where about are we going to find the concept that he's trying to teach these two groups of men? Where are we going to find that in the scriptures that we don't make that error as well? Well, try as you might, I mean, perhaps you'll do better than I did. I can't find it anywhere. So he was evidently aware of Scriptures that, frankly, we're not aware of. The story of the rich man and Lazarus, clearly based on 2 Ezra 7, which has been removed from your Bible and mine,

is clearly based on that understanding. We've walked around now for over 100 years without that in our scriptures. Nobody seems to miss it. Frankly, nobody seems to care. Although it answers one of the most prominent questions in Christianity, what happens when I die? And these kind of things are sad, and they all come from this glorification and worship of a book. We have to understand that

when he says you don't know the scriptures nor the power of God, well haven't we learned so far that the grace of God is the power of God? That is what the power of God is. It's grace. Grace is an unmerited favor. Grace is the power of God used on your behalf. And so this grace has allowed communication between us and the Father. He's saying that we're making these mistakes in our theology because we don't know the scriptures

or how to talk to God. Now that's kind of sad. And we really have to kind of sit there, palms up, and say yes sir, I suppose you're right. You have to be right. You're much older than I am. You've been around longer than I have. And if you say that there's things I don't know then I'm going to have to concede that there are things that I don't know. And there's no shame in this.

It's just that we just need to be a little more humble and realize that we don't know everything. And there are things that we have to present before our Father in that quiet time that I tell you. You know, what's the three? You remember the three rules? Are they rules? I don't know. So our duty is to keep the commandments of God.

Our duty is to never disobey our conscience which is just good common sense. And as we keep the commandments we'll find that our conscience actually changes from what mama and daddy told us. We hear their voice in our head. The idea for us is to read our scriptures and become familiar with our Savior so that we're thinking red ink, and to take time every day to hear the voice of God. And if we do these kinds of things, we're not going to fail. We're not going to fall.

We're not going to be carried about by every wind of doctrine. And this advice I'm giving you now is so much more powerful in your life than to memorize scripture and to make sure you go to Sunday school and that you do your lessons and that well, frankly, that you read your Bible every day. If people were as intent on hearing the voice of God and hearing the Word of God as much as they were of hearing the words in this book, there'd be a lot of our troubles,

especially the troubles between us, actually settled. Jesus knew this. I'm sure that He was fully aware that there was going to be a problem when he came to the earth and had to use the mentality of mankind, had to use a brain that wasn't firing on all of its cylinders. Well, I really believe that. I really believe that when he subjected himself to become a man, I mean he

emptied himself, the Bible teaches us that and you'll find this very concept in the Greek scriptures that when he came to the earth he emptied himself. He emptied himself of everything every kind of power and understanding and all these kinds of things where he emptied himself of that station he had with God to become one of us. The only thing that I noticed that he kept were his

memories of being with the Father. Restoring to me the glory I had with you before the foundation of the world. He was fully aware of that. But as far as omniscience and these kinds of things that we arbitrarily attribute to God, he exemplified none of that. Absolutely none of it. Why would he look at a demon? A demon who knew his name. I know thee who thou art. Jesus the Son of God. That's what the demon said. What did Jesus

say to the demon? What's your name? Well you don't know? You don't know who I am? How is it Jesus didn't know his name? So I mean these are a lot of questions that we deal with about the origin of Christ, the incompleteness of the scriptures that we have. But here's the great news. Okay, so the scriptures that we own are not complete. Or perhaps they've been mistranslated or retranslated,

transliterated, whatever your complaint happens to be with anything other than your favorite scriptures, by the way. Whatever those problems are, they're all solved perfectly, wholly. They're absolutely solved in the habit of keeping the commandments, never disobeying your conscience, and taking time every day to hear the voice of God. They're all solved. I drive some of my

best friends crazy when I say, when they're talking about something, wondering what the proper answer is and what the, you know, how does God feel about this or whatever else. And one will quote scripture and the other will quote a scripture and my Bible says this and my Bible says that. And they look at me and I don't care what the Bible says. It doesn't matter to me. I just know this within myself. Well, you can't go by that. Well, sure I can. Sure I can.

If you don't have the Bible standing in your way as a direct offense to what it is that you're teaching, or what you believe, and you have this unction within yourself that things are this way and not that way and there's nothing standing in your way of doing that, what's wrong with holding that thought? Especially if you're doing as

I try to teach folks that everything that you have whether it's money, lands, houses, children, wives, cattle, whatever it happens to be, or even the revelations of God to hold everything we have in an open hand. There are things that I believe today that I am convinced just from my past, from what I read in Scripture and such,

I know that it could change tomorrow. It could change as the Lord decides that this is a hindrance for you and this needs to be clarified and essentially the truth needs to replace what you believe today. I hold it with an open hand. If this doctrine is not so, then remove it from my life. Replace it with the proper doctrine. These are the kinds of attitudes that I just frankly don't see in Christianity.

They have the attitude that they're coming into this thing. They're going to learn this. They're going to graduate from Sunday school, they're going to graduate from their little Bible studies, they're going to go to seminaries and graduate, they're going to learn this whole thing from the beginning. And I guess, I assume that they feel like that so many years with Christ why you've got enough experience that

you're an elder. You're someone to whom other people come for their answers. But the truth is that we're probably, probably not even close. And we're being saved not because of what we know, but in many cases I really believe that we're going to be saved in spite of what we know. And the other warning that naturally attaches itself to that is, I want you to know that

ignorance is not a hindrance to salvation. But you'd better believe that rebellion is. So there may be things that you don't necessarily believe that may not be a part of your life because you don't know any better or because it's never been presented to you. It's just not a part of your spiritual repertoire. We're talking about ignorance here.

But buddy, oh buddy, if something's revealed to you and you know it to be so, and you turn your you avert your eyes from it, you turn your back on it, you choose to go the way of your church or even the world. I mean, in this particular case, they're equal. They're equally dangerous in your life. No matter what it is that turns you away from truth and causes you not to be ignorant anymore, but rebellious, friend, I couldn't give you not one ounce of hope for your salvation.

I happen to believe, and I've said so many times, almost famous for saying, I believe millions of people are going to be saved in ignorance. Millions of people will be saved in ignorance. You know what? I may be one of them. I hope I'm saved in my ignorance, but I don't have any hope at all that there'll be one soul, not one, saved in rebellion. So what do we need to avoid? We need to avoid rebellion.

We don't need to, if we put as much effort into not being rebellious, into being servants of Christ, and being slaves to our God, as we do in trying to remedy what we consider to be our ignorance, we'd be a lot better off. A lot better off. I have followed bad advice that I have conjured in my own mind. And as you hear me say, take God's hand and put a pin in his fingers and say here's a sign here and move his hand on the page like whatever will I have decided is God's will

I get him to sign it, get him to sign off on it I have made mistakes like that all of my life this is God's will this is what God wants me to do you know I prayed about it and lo and behold when you when you pray about something and you find that my goodness isn't that wonderful that the Lord wants me to do exactly what I want to do you better better be very, very careful of that. Because my experience is that we don't even come close. When you do find the truth, you realize how far off from the shore you actually

were. It's really kind of frightening. And you know, if you respond to that properly, it's going to be you falling on your face before God saying, have mercy on me, a sinner. It's going to be that humility of, oh my goodness, I can't believe I've done this. I need you to guide me. I need you to help me.

And experience the forgiveness. Experience that atonement of God that he's going to cover this. But here's one thing that I've noticed. If you don't mind, I'd like to encourage you in some of these things. If a person is dedicated to the commandments of God, number one, if you're breaking the commandments, none of these things apply. Friend, I don't care. I mean, I'm sorry, but I don't have license to tell you that nine out of ten commandments is enough.

I can't do it. Not to be faithful to what I understand in the Scriptures, and certainly not faithful to what I feel within my spirit, that the ten commandments are absolutely achievable things, and you're going to be held accountable for every one that you don't keep. And if you don't keep one, you might as well not keep any of them. That's what I understand that the Scriptures make very clear. Now, if that's the case, and I believe it is,

then as we keep the commandments, we enter into a place, into our lives where we can actually trust our conscience. And if we are keeping the commandments of God and obeying our conscience, and we're taking time every day to hear the voice of God for our life, you're going to find even in that situation, even when you've done everything that you know

that you ought to be doing, you're going to find in that situation that sometimes you just get it wrong but here's the wonderful thing about our God there has been so many times that I've gone the wrong way you know he wanted me to go right but I thought well you know left looks like it's a little more direct or for whatever reason whether it's selfish, I don't know. But I've found myself making mistakes in those areas and not necessarily following the voice of God

as closely as I'm supposed to do or mistaking my way through, and this happens. But here's the wonderful thing. I've seen our God come into those situations because of sincerity, because of a love for truth, because I keep the commandments of God. And I've seen Him fix the situation anyway. Not because of what I believe or what I said or what I did or the way I handled myself, but in spite of all those things, he fixes them anyway. He's just, I've seen him do it.

I'm not telling you to depend on this as if it's some kind of a rule because I can't say that it is. I have suffered for my decisions. It doesn't always happen, but in cases that I found myself, well, denying myself and, to prosper anyway. And this is why we need to do things His way. This is why we need to worship Him. He's a wonderful God, and He's given us the power to become a son of God. Our time is gone already. That's our introduction, perhaps, to chapter 30 in our book The Words of Jesus. But we'll take it up here next time. Hey, would you do something for me? I'd appreciate hearing from you. You can do that by emailing me at don at thinkredinc.com

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